Hello
Firstly, may I say a big ‘thank you’ to all those of you who commented so kindly on the recent transmission of “My Life with Animals”. I must admit, it was a little odd for me to have the past 30 years or so of work condensed into an hour of telly, and I couldn’t help thinking about the many extraordinary things I’ve had the privilege to witness over that time which didn’t make it into the show. That said, the producer was presented with an impossibly huge catalogue of work to cram into the final show and did an amazing job of sifting and sorting for what he felt was representative.
 The bottom line of course is that I have led, and continue to lead, a charmed life.
I’m really chuffed to have been able to spend months in the UK so far this year. It has been ages since I’ve been in a position to watch the gradual but spiritually uplifting shift of the Winter season into Spring. It’s the little details which I find so thrilling and from a phenological point of view, fascinating.
In my last diary, I noted the early Chaffinch song this year. I guess I had a precocious neighbour though, because no sooner had he started singing in mid February, than the rain came down and he fell silent! Testosterone dampened I guess! Now though, the house in Somerset is surrounded by birdsong, from a host of Chaffinches, to Blue and Great Tits, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Song Thrush, and my favourite of the lot, Blackbird. I get an almost physical lift from hearing the chocolate-rich fluting of the local cock bird belting out his song from the branches of a nearby oak tree. Chiffchaff and Blackcap have been adding a tinkle of summer to the chorus each morning too, with percussion from a Great Spotted Woodpecker. And now the Swallows; the sky-stitching, merry twittering, metallic blue bullets of summer are back. I first saw an excited gathering of them on the 7th April, flicking over the meadow like shreds of burnt paper, and another wave dashed by on the 10th. I have now thrown open the doors of my outbuildings to invite them in to raise their families. I hope they accept the offer.
 The other day, whilst gazing out of my bedroom window, I was treated to the brief but thrilling sight of another avian neighbour. A narrow, quiet road runs in front of my house, and a flicker of blue-grey coursing in from the south caught my eye. A male Sparrowhawk, small, compact and mercurial was clipping along at no more than a metre above the tarmac. He travelled perhaps 100m before throwing himself up and over the blackthorn hedge that borders the road. And he was gone. I had an adolescent rush of pleasure from the view, short lived though it was. This was the “hedge-hopping” behaviour Sparrowhawks are famous for, but which I haven’t seen clearly for ages and which sadly contributes to their deaths from time to time as they hop into the path of an oncoming vehicle. In the past I have watched the whole process, from the prospecting flight at altitude, to plummeting stoop (which might appear to be directly at a target but is more often than not to get a head of steam up before arriving on the hunting grounds and belting along at low level) to the final, blistering approach, concealed by hedges or bushes. The point at which the Sparrowhawk “hops” over the hedge looks arbitrary, but may well be based on the raptor’s initial high level scouting mission from where it may have spotted a flock of small birds feeding on a field edge. Anyone who has a bird table visited by these fast-paced hunters will have witnessed the precision of the final closing attack. Sparrowhawks arrive like lighting, strike in a blur and flutter of twisting wings and legs, and disappear as quickly as they arrived (unless of course they take larger prey to ground where they kill, pluck and eat it).
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 Oh, and I can’t help adding, with an equal amount of adolescent excitement, that just the other day (15th April) I saw the Sparrowhawk’s giant cousin near my home. A raucous clamour from a flock of Rooks and Jackdaws caught my attention over the nearby woods, and on looking up I saw what at first was a Buzzard, which then became a Sparrowhawk, but finally and definitively took shape as a female Goshawk! I was thrilled. Again, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these cracking raptors, and to have one so close to home is a mega thrill.
Also around my garden there has been a flurry of nesting activity. Because the house is new to me, I was pretty late putting up nest boxes this year (they first went up on the 7th April). Within 2 days of the first box going up on a small oak tree near the house, an excited Blue Tit was checking it out and bringing in tufts of moss. I think a great tit has shown an interest in a second box, so it’s looking like I shall have a lot of new families in the neighbourhood this year.
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 Earlier in the season I made a brief trip up to Cairngorm to check out some of the locations on which we are likely to be based for this year’s Springwatch. Within 3 days we squeezed in about 10 locations, including the peak of Cairngorm itself, which was blanketed in an arctic-style covering of snow, whipped up by wind. Though this trip was very much centred on seeing as much of the area as possible, rather than looking for the wildlife, I did notch up sightings of a few local specialities (Red Squirrel and Crested Tit) and the track and sign of a few more (Capercaillie, Pine Martin and Wildcat). We also visited some of the locations which we hope will be occupied by one of the natural stars of the show – Ospreys. Obviously, because of the sensitive nature of these birds, I can’t give away too much about where we shall be, but as well as one very famous nest site, we started work in a secluded spot which is quite probably the most beautifully located nest site for this species that I have seen. Just as lovely are the grand old trees in the ancient Caledonian pine forest here, every one of them dripping with character and gnarled history.
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I am making my way back up to Scotland soon, hopefully to film the Capercaillie lecking (males displaying vigorously for the attention of females) and to get up close and personal with another local hero, the Slavonian Grebe. Both missions will entail a degree of what some might describe as hardship (18 hours in a hide for one, including an overnight, and bobbing about in a rubber ring in icy waters for the other) but of course, the privilege of getting up close and personal with these wild spirits soon evaporates any self indulgent notion of discomfort. I think.
I’ll be back in touch soon. |
