Looking Back at Winter

My winter language in that lockdown nature diary dwells less on the grey and dull, and more on the bright and cold.

11/1/2021
Geese by the river
Gleam of wet grass
Remembering frost on spiders’ webs

16/1/2021
Magpie on the peak of the roof against the blue sky…
Steam curling up from the fence in the sun

Yet my memory of that winter is full of days like this one on which I’m typing – sky of dark clouds, rain barely bothering to fall, cold breeze. Those are days where the weather is like the taste of a food so bland your appetite vanishes. There’s no spark, no drive to see, do or be.

And yet, since they seem to make up the majority of winter days, life still infuses them. For every day on which I made no reference to the weather, there are still creatures that stirred me to record them, to capture them alive, however briefly, in pen.

18/1/2021
Jackdaw flocks overhead, calls like pebbles hitting roofs. Settling in the tall bare trees behind houses.
Wren calling from knot of ivy round the fence

11/2/2021
Heron flying overhead, great square wings, yellow beak pulled back but set against the air
Red kites & blue tits

Maybe I remember it wrong – perhaps there were more days of icy sun or of turbulent rain. I’d rather have some wildness in the weather than the slog through days that never really seem to begin.

8/2/2021
White light through windows – snow. Just a crusting, colours showing through

9/2/2021
Frost on the cars Bright sun, water in the fields Yellow & green
Strange yearning to walk on crunchy frozen mud, cold wind on the cheeks, warm in winter clothes
Magpie in the trees opposite colours very clear
Going for a walk in the scrub land. Wading through flood water, catching in brambles…. Snowdrops stretching down the bank of the stream and into the water. Freezing cold…
Out on the basketball court, snow falling like hard pellets

Looking Back at Winter

Red kites are the constant thread in my lockdown nature notes. They’re present almost every day. I saw one today, its detail sharp in the early evening sun. In that winter lockdown the grey skies blurred them into shapes recognisable mainly by their shape against the clouds.

12/1/2021 – Red kite in the sky over the street
14/1/2021 – Red kites over the A34

As spring came closer they would appear in clearer skies, with the sun touching the burnt colours of their feathers.

11/3/2021 – Red kites again. Blue sky at times, and rain

Going through the diary, I’m surprised by how little extra detail I’d give them. I remember first seeing them above the M40 passing through the Chilterns, and gradually they’ve spread right over the city and beyond. They still have their magic, a casual serenity in the sky. Sometimes they’re alone, at others they gather in aerobatic crowds.

Their calls, eerie, high cries, register on my mind as the edge of a serrated blade – but strangely comforting, as though they’re a sign that one or two things in the world are still in their right places.

Somehow I don’t think I recorded it, but I remember one of those interminable days that didn’t have a name, grey, and everyone shut in, and sitting at the glass table by the window with my laptop. A bird appeared just by my hand, and yet clearly high above – a reflection. I watched the mirror bird loop around that inverted world, around the closure of the screen and the glass, and finally vanish over the table’s edge.

I glanced up, and saw the bird in this world angle its wings and spiral away.

22/3/2021 – Red kites Red kites Red kites

29/3/2021 – Red kites low like waiting for the sun to set

Looking Back at Winter

Continuing through my winter lockdown nature diary.

After the first two entries, there’s a sketch of a poem that takes up a whole page of my notebook. I remember how it came a bit at a time, as though writing about people was hard in that grey weather. But then my next entry is its own poem. A found one perhaps, just observation, but the way it fell on the page seems satisfying, as though I’d poured paint with an idea in my head.

9/1/2021

Robins singing on my bike ride Blue tits Blackbird chip-chip
as darkness was falling on the far side of the river
Misty, grey darkness
Goose drifting on the Thames
Robin starting out in front of the bike, diving into leaves
Red kite in a bare tree by the A34 White patch bright on its chest dusty brown
Steel water Black shapes and shadows
Water on Port Meadow as night comes down

To me this sets off resonances, different threads that I can follow through the rest of the diary. Next time let’s follow a red thread, a string that leads to a kite.

Looking Back at Winter

In the third lockdown, I sat at the glass table in the window looking out onto my scrap of garden, and picked up a pen. No warmth and summer this time, and just the prospect of grey, sitting working at my laptop. With everything shutting down, I opened my notebook and scrawled a list.

6/1/2021

Blue tit on the bird feeder next door
Red kite calling overhead
Cold, frost in the early morning
Sparrow in the tree, feathers, round in the twigs

A nature diary, not a literary one, not intended for anything except to keep me sane. I’ve always looked at nature, and often I’ve written about it. But this was an exercise to keep mind, eye and heart working when all three might as well have gone to sleep.

Next day, a lot more words.

…..
The mint looks dead. But the flower beds have many small leaves sprouting.
…
Robin in the car park. I sent F out to see him. She said he fought many battles against other birds.
….
Wren flying, a fizz blur up from leaves in front of the bike, into other leaves.

I like the details here. I remember the robin. This diary has lain half forgotten since life started filling up again after the lockdown, but as another winter approaches I’ve started recalling fragments of some of the things I recorded.

I’ll share them with you. Like wine, it’ll be better once taken out of the dark and shared with friends.