The signs are there, if you look. Hazel catkins hanging heavy and yellow in the all-too-brief sunlight, snowdrops poking through the soil, a tentative crocus or two. As daylight grows, sunset nudging past 5pm, I count the seconds till the arrival of the swifts (7m at the time of publication, give or take). Spring, as Tom Lehrer once observed, is here. Uh-suh-puh-ring is here. Life is skittles and life is beer. Don’t tell the pigeons.
Perhaps “here” is an exaggeration. We have a way to go before spring’s full flowering. The 20 redwings – jet-propelled brown darts – rushing up from grass to tree are a sign of that. They won’t take their leave of us for a month yet. But there are at least hints of what is to come. And the visual cues are supplemented by the aural.
The thin, lonely voice of the garden robin, a winter stalwart, has company now. Great tits, newly energised, tea-cher-tea-cher-ing for all they’re worth; the indeterminate scrabble of a dunnock in the bush by the bus station; the tickly-tickly-tickly of a goldfinch above the traffic rumble of West Norwood high street. There’s a vibrancy to it, as if, after endless barren months lying around on the bedroom floor among the dirty socks, the air has been plugged back in, gradually replenishing its supply of the good stuff.
It will grow and grow now, thickening with new voices, incoming from the global south. The chiffchaff’s two-tone ping-pong – a tonic in March, enervatingly monotonous in June; the scratchy rattle of a whitethroat; the plaintive downward lilt of a willow warbler. Sounds to lift the heart. For decades I was oblivious to the world of birdsong. But once you start hearing it, you can’t stop.
A local walk, urban streets. A sound stops me, a hedgebound sound. Unmistakeable in timbre – these rich flutings can only be a blackbird – but it’s subdued, not for public consumption. Soon it will be giving it large from the top of the big cedar next door. For now, it’s practising, burbling to itself, readying for spring. The intimacy of the moment is a privilege.
Life is skittles, life is beer. And life is birdsong too. The signs are there, if you listen.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
