Spring has come earlier than expected this year with a week of sunny weather settled over Britain. Despite the cold wind the landscape seems to change hourly so fast is the growth.
This time last year I wrote of Spring in May see here but such has been the extended spell of benign weather it appears to have advanced by at least two weeks.
Most noticeable are the eye catching white patches of flowering blackthorn in the hedgerows, the millions of small flowers turning each bush into a cumulus of billowing white as if a cloud has fallen to earth. I can only think that this phenomenon has come about as the myriads of tiny, delicate white flowers have had the opportunity to thrive in the dry conditions and not endure the more usual battering of wind and rain that is often an unwelcome accompaniment to this time of year.
In line with this year's more advanced season has been the early arrival of a familiar warbler from sub saharan Africa, the Common Whitethroat.
It is impossible to feel anything but affection for this irrepressible and endearing little bird, that comes to us by some miracle of intuitive navigation from its winter home in Africa to settle here for the summer in my part of Oxfordshire, as do countless others of its kind throughout the length of Britain. The males sing to advertise their presence immediately on arrival and for a couple of weeks make themselves very obvious, singing from exposed perches or flinging themselves in a jitterbug flight of passion into a cloudless sky in order to attract the later ariving females.
I rose early today, so early the dew still lay in a heavy wetness on the grass but on a morning where, at last the chill of the persistent northerly wind had faded to a vague murmur from the southwest. I walked around a yet to open, deserted Farmoor reservoir to Pinkhill Lock, down on the river and where I knew at least two whitethroats had arrived in the last few days.
The lack of wind meant the waters of the reservoir were as of glass, a mirror of stillness as I made my way across the causeway to Pinkhill, there to stand at the head of the path leading down to the lock keeper's cottage. Scattered hawthorns, freshly garlanded with emerging green leaves stood by the path as a ragged wire fence struggled its way onwards towards Farmoor Village just beyond the reservoir boundary and made invisible behind a blur of yellow, the dusted catspaws of willow flowers, and those inveterate colonisers of waste ground, bramble and hawthorn.
I stood motionless, listening, and soon the cheery impatient warble of a male whitethroat, hidden in one of the hawthorns came on the still air. I continued to stand, waiting to detect any movement within the hawthorn that would betray the bird's hiding place..
It did not take long before he partially revealed himself, threading his nimble body through the puzzle of branches, broken twigs, thorns and emergent leaves, picking off insects, left, right and centre.
He sang again and emboldened moved higher up the tree until reaching the very top, where he cocked his head to listen for any challenge, before delivering a burst of intense song, directed at a rival nearby.
For a minute he clutched the highest twig, fully in the open and sang once, twice more, before the exposure was too much to bear and he sought sanctuary within the heart of the tree once more.
I reflected, not for the first time on this unremarkable annual encounter. It was of course nothing of the sort but a minor miracle.that this tiny bird had survived countless dangers and made its perilous journey under the stars all the way from Africa, to bring a few minutes of immense fulfilment and pleasure to this earthbound mortal.
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