By 7.30am, the sun was up over Axe Edge and was coming down through a sky of pure starling-egg blue. The column of smoke arising from a far farmhouse chimney was the only sign of human presence, and in all that sunlit quietness the songs of displaying golden plovers – the first for the year and among the earliest I’ve ever logged in our area – acquired even more meaning.
The species is a medium-sized, round-headed wader more delicate than a lapwing, with upper parts peppered black on a background colour that is mid-journey between green and gold. In spring, the linen-white breast reacquires a black oval patch, and in all seasons the undersides of the long narrow wings shine silver.
In level flight, golden plovers have a shallow, lashing action, so that as they pass overhead they give an impression of driven intensity (quite how fast they move was apparently the conundrum inspiring its creator to the first ever Guinness Book of Records). What’s so affecting, therefore, about the display flight is the way that it reverses the bird’s whole gift for speed.
Plover pairs rise high overhead until they are barely more than specks. The wing beats slow, and deepen, with each downstroke slower even than its counterpart, as if the bird seeks to stall midair. And as they yaw, butterfly-like – up, then down – the wings coordinate with corresponding song-phrases – pee-yieuuu, pee-yieuuu, pee-yieuuu – which are made in equal part of melancholy and joy. No song could be truer to these bleak upland places that golden plovers love. In fact, it is the land expressed as sound, and so soft and immaterial it can penetrate straight to your heart.
I say that, but what filled out the full effect was that, as I watched the plovers sing and dance on air, there were reeling songs of skylarks and curlews, crossing the same sky, added their own notes of deep excitement. All around me, lapwings rose and tumbled down upon the fields, ringing the place in a lapwing’s crazy spring routine. It was the wholeness of the chorus, each part integral to the morning, that unleashed its wider sense of deep contentment.
• 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
