I parked the car and headed down the hill towards Fox Corner LNR just before 6am. There was an owl call just above my head. Locating it was tricky. As it was early I didn’t feel too stupid standing staring up into a tree. Suddenly I saw a blob on a branch halfway out from the main trunk. Then the blob moved it was a Tawny Owl and it flew back up the road disappearing into the darker woody section.
The dawn was beginning but as it was overcast the sun wasn’t yet visible. It was wonderful not to be disturbed by the main traffic. In fact the main noises which were occurring were from the birds as they sang in the dawn chorus. I was in the sound as if I was the core and the birds were all around me but yet distant. I couldn’t see the birds but I certainly heard them.
Sitting at my usual spot didn’t really appeal so I headed off down the main path after passing the pond marker. Then I changed my mind and headed back in front of the pond. A startled Roe deer crashed through the willow on the far bank of the pond. I moved along the path. I was drinking in the dawn chorus not really focussing on any particular bird when I suddenly noted a call or song I was unfamiliar with and I began to be drawn to it. It appeared to be coming from the trees behind me that I had just walked by which border the wooden walk-way by the pond. I moved towards the sound and traversed the path by The Hodge stream. The reedy sound became louder and then on the other side of the bank I saw a Treecreeper and realised the sound was eminating from it. I watched it for some minutes.
You can hear the sound track here Treecreeper wild track of a similar sounding specimen. My one is more repetitive than the one on this track but like the English language birds also have accents/dialects!
I was longing for it to give me some clues into whether it was going in and out of a hole. Surprisingly it stayed on the same tree. Just when I thought it was flying off it fluttered down to a lower section and started all over again.
Incidentally on the next Monday at Mottisfont near Romsey I watched a couple with my Brother-in-law circumnavigating first an enormous Alder then a Sweet Chestnut. It was amazing to see it defying gravity and would have certainly given me a headache if I had had to do what I witnessed – that is crawling, upside down on an enormous bough.
Back to the Fox Corner Treecreeper. The other thing that happened whilst watching it was I’d be looking at it then I would lose it completely then see it again but in the same place. It had fooled me into thinking it had moved away when in fact the cryptic plumage had hidden it right in front of me. Watching it calling with its bill wide open was something too. Wonderful! I’ve been thinking about this bird a little recently as I’ve been reminded that it was this species that had set me off into birdwatching as I discovered one whilst crawling around on the Beverley Westwood’s which was my boyhood stamping ground with a fellow nature lover.
(As I write this and think about it in retrospect. It’s made me aware again of the Creator’s loving presence and how he’s been drawing me through nature and particularly with this bird. I’ve been reading about the unusual proximity of nature written of by a Graham Harvey and quoted in an article Friendships across the Divide: a theology of encounter by Paul Cudby in the book Earthed. He deals with the subject of having encounters with nature and how they can actually herald the presence of God, or a creature speaking to us as it were but in its own language. He writes of how this kind of thing can often be misunderstood in some Christian circles and says there is a need for a theology of this kind of experience. It’s enlightening and explains it well without losing the Christ tradition). .
I moved away as I had actually lost it in my looking. I had been determined to stay with the bird and see how long I could manage watching – thinking who’s going to move on first me or her. Walking back along the path I wasn’t quite sure what to do next I was still in that moment when I heard a high pitched piping which I knew to be a Kingfisher and right above me in the direction I was heading came this tight fast dart and shot by towards the stream near the pond which I had come from. Probably the highest I’d actually seen one flying, about the average tree height of the trees around me, about 20 feet up.
I didn’t want to spoil what I had experienced and started to make tracks back to the car. On the way back I noticed my first Cowslip of the year not quite opened which put me in mind of Easter how it wasn’t quite yet time to celebrate with the rest of God’s people and yet the time was coming for the resurrection.
