Winter Thrushes, Warmer Thrushes … March 2024.
Whilst the calendar month has moved on and daylight has increased past six o’clock in the evening, it still feels wintery – chilly and damp with porridgey skies and so much water and mud. The spring I’m noticing most at the moment comes via the thrushes.
As soon as the year turns itself to the light after the winter solstice, the mistle thrush begins to sing – in fact this year, it began caroling a whole month earlier. I love mistle thrush song, make no mistake – but there is also something ‘other’ about it that is a little bit underworld, a little bit inside your head. I ought to explain.
Being one of the earliest and longest singers, both in months and day length, mistle thrushes sing from November or December, right through to July; and from just before dawn, to long after sunset. Something of a contrarian, the ‘stormcock’ sings from the tops of tall trees, even into the teeth of a gale and driving rain or snow.
Its song, as well as its colours, have none of the warmth and apricity of the song thrush. He is all argent, silver, iron and steel. Even the spots on his breast and winter-king pot belly are like thorns. His song is lovely – it truly is – but it has a lone tonal persistence through the long cold days of winter and early spring. A song that is both near and far-away, and far-carrying. A resolute snowdrop cheery-weariness through the trudge of January mud, February’s leaking boots and March’s weak sunshine. It is a song delivered like joy capped under ice. It gets inside your head with a slight, edge-of-migraine haunting. Perhaps it is only thus, if you are outside all that time with it, ready for a bit of warmth and the ease of drier ground.
When the song thrush starts up, its short, repeated phrases feel a little like this too, until the sisyphus, sisyphus, sisyphus morphs into the cherry dew, cherry dew, knee deep, knee deep phrases of warm and blossomy days. It is as if the bird is pushing spring uphill against the winter with its cheerfulness, only for it to roll back in. But as the other birds join in, as they are now – the honeyed, rich, languorous notes of the blackbird, the church-bell chaffinch – we recognise the mistle thrush’s place in this chorus at last – his is the long, lone jazz intro. The bassline that holds it all together, suddenly warmed with a primrose light, we can all get behind.
Articles and News …
My Guardian Country Diary this month is a noticing of the departure lounge chatter of our winter thrushes, the redwings and the fieldfares, in an aerial stream – the spring equivalent of swallows gathering on wires at the end of summer. You can find it here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/06/country-diary-the-sound-of-water-up-in-the-trees
My Red Kite piece is the cover story in this month’s Countryfile Magazine and covers a history of their triumphant return as a conservation success, busts some myths and dicusses some of the controversy that sometimes dogs these stunning birds. It’s not online yet, but you can read a similar piece I wrote about blackbirds here: https://www.countryfile.com/wildlife/birds/blackbirds-guide
My Countryfile Magazine Opinion Column (always beautifully illustrated by Lynn Hatzius) is one close to my heart and a very real, lived experience and crisis – that of rural housing and what to do about it. Our long term rented cottage was built in 1953, at a time of practical and hopeful response to need, to house rural workers. And despite small developments of social housing being built each decade from the 30s to the 90s, many are now privately owned and out of reach, and no new houses have been built since. There is an in-depth report from the CPRE here: https://www.cpre.org.uk/news/our-report-housing-crisis-poses-threat-to-survival-of-rural-communities/
Some exciting news …
I am thrilled and excited indeed to be part of a new movement and a beautifully illustrated supporting book, called Wild Service, edited by Nick Hayes and Jon Moses, and published by Bloomsbury. It is a cultural anthology full of diverse voices supporting a responsible and engaged Right to Roam. There is a little tease here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4JAvEUNdZf/ and here: https://twitter.com/Right_2Roam/status/1765073071147470912?t=c5Zq0KYpL2uL71IXDNAfbA&s=19 and it is available to pre-order now, here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/wild-service-9781526673282/ More soon!
I am also really excited to be a ReWild Yourself Champion for 2024. My goodness, I’m among 9 other very cool activists and artists for nature and people. Have a peek here and do check out the other Champions and what they’re up to: https://rewildyourself.com/champions/ Again, more soon!
It’s been a busy couple of months, teaching a spell of nature writing for Cambridge University with the warm and wonderfully talented writer Jessica J Lee (whose new book, Dispersals is out in April and it’s BRILLIANT!) and I’ve been involved in a fabulous local Poetry Festival in Hungerford, with some of my former West Berkshire Library Service colleagues. I ran a Poetry Workshop with some really lovely participants and am working on a whole community ‘Postcard Poem for Hungerford’ too – in the meantime, I hope you’re spotting signs of spring wherever you are, and listening to the birds …
nicola chester 