Soon to Depart 24th August 2020

Somehow we have arrived at early autumn in a turbulent year and I find myself reflecting on how the past months and days have drifted, as if I were in some transcendant state. The world of humanity in its current situation is hard to comprehend as the familiar and its daily re-assurance has been transformed into the unfamiliar and unsettling.

The ever present fear of a virus that threatens us has, I suppose, occupied my mind to an extent greater than anything else since it first arrived. Nightmares are only meant to come during sleep and not when fully awake. These days sleep, if one can calm one's anxious mind,  brings blessed relief for a few precious hours.

The anxieties that beset me, maybe most of us, are legion. Day to day concerns brought about by the virus are a constant. Concerns such as, have I washed my hands enough, where is the sanitiser and do I have enough face masks, accumulate to relentlessly trouble my equanimity.There is so much to remember, even just to leave the house, these days. Nothing can be spontaneous anymore, there is the nagging anguish about an ever present but often exaggerated sense of danger and every action has to be pre-planned and carefully considered for its consequences. 

Just about the only thing that does not involve inordinate pre-planning on my part are regular visits to Farmoor Reservoir and its surrounds, where there is space enough to avoid social contact to a large degree. Birding, as a matter of course often involves subtle forms of social distancing anyway.  

Here in the early hours after dawn I can wander the Thames Path and rarely see another living soul. Early morning is also, fortuitously, the optimum time to find and see birds and at this time of year there are countless warblers flitting through the bushes, as both young and old feed, preparing to lay down stores of fat to provide the energy they will require to take them to distant winter homes in southern climes.

The number and variety of calls emanating from the bushes in the stillness of early morning can be remarkable. The quiet, peevish tack tack of Blackcaps and the very similar but slightly sharper calls of Lesser Whitethroats, lurking in elderberry or bramble, test my auditory skills. The churring of Common Whitethroats and anxiously whistled hoooeets of Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs follow me along the hedgelines, their perpetrators hidden for the most part but occasionally launching themselves skywards to snatch an insect from the air.

Today I stopped by a ragged tall hedgerow of unruly hawthorn trees, even now, at this early stage of autumn festooned with starbursts of  hard, crimson red berries. In places the hedgerow is overgrown by rampant brambles that, unchecked in this forgotten corner and left to nature, have enveloped parts of the small trees like a shroud. The blackberries are ripening now and Blackcaps are making the most of this late offering but there are other birds hidden amongst those leaves and berries. Half seen shapes that come and go amongst the lattice work of twigs. impossible to follow in the density of foliage and branches.

A rhythmic grating call, uttered with monotonous insistency came from a small bird hidden in the brambles. I knew from prior experience the source of this sound was a Reed Warbler but they are adept at never showing themselves for more than a fraction of a second. This promised to be a challenging exercise if I wished to see the bird..

Harder to glimpse than many warblers, they are in the main inveterate skulkers but this bird had not read the script and obligingly, both by calling incessantly and preferring to work its way along the outside of the hedge rather than in the impenetrable centre, allowed me to follow its progress through tree and bramble and regularly catch sight of its unremarkable brown form.  

Eventually I managed to see it in the open for a few seconds as it perched on a thin hawthorn branch. Its pristine plumage showed it was a bird born this year. Adult birds would look much more worn as they do not moult until they are in Africa. Indeed its parents may well have already departed for their winter home, as many leave towards the end of August with the young birds following slightly later.

Soon now this unusually vocal individual will be departing too, exchanging the reeds, riparian habitat and deep recesses of the waterside hedgerows here at Farmoor, for a similar habitat under tropical African skies.

I try to imagine this tiny bird waiting for nightfall and a clear sky, then ascending to the topmost twig of maybe this very hedge in which it is currently lurking and with one look at a ceiling of stars,  launch itself into a night sky that will guide it on a course to an unknown and uncertain future. It has no fear or apprehension but will obey the instincts of its kind, genetically programmed to go, when and where, without query or doubt. This fragment of life encompassed in the lightest of bone and feather is a living miracle, burdened with no memory of the past nor with a capacity for anticipating the future. Its life is entirely conducted in the present, each day and night a beginning and end. Nothing more, nothing less, it does what it is ordained to do instinctively.

Mindfulness recommends living in the day and forgetting about what has happened and what might happen. I try to live my life like this but it is not easy. In nature however it is normal but we humans have forgotten this with all our worries and concerns. 

This briefest of connection with a small being from the natural world provided me with an anchor to stabilise my inner turmoil about what has been and what may be.

For a few minutes at Farmoor watching this Reed Warbler I too lived just for the moment.