We quickly fell into a routine after lockdown began, something I never seem to manage normally. These past weeks have taught me that it’s not such a bad thing to tread and retread the same paths. Every day I look at these same hills, these same shores, and every day they show me something new. Over time, these daily walks build up, one upon the other, to create a long view: a portrait of a place through time.
A few days ago, for the first time this season, I heard a familiar voice rising above the rest like a flautist. It sang a sliding upwards note which it then repeated, gathering pace, until it hit its rhythmic, rippling peak. I searched the sky for the source: wings outstretched, and that unmistakable bill – a long and slender curved proboscis – less hummingbird than hummingbird moth. A curlew, Numenius arquata, announcing his presence at his breeding ground.
He had a distinctive flight pattern too, making a laboured, flapping climb before a smooth and effortless gliding descent. Rising and falling, stitching the air over the marshy meadowland near where the Hoy Sound pounds the coast as he searched for a mate.
After a moment, a second voice rose to meet his: revving up just as he had, moving through the gears, escalating to that same bubbling crescendo. A rival, I supposed, but to me they sounded as a well-rehearsed duet, an ode to spring.
The following day came the squeeze-toy squall of lapwings, and I spotted their tumbling butterfly flights, flashing white underwings as if showing their bloomers. And from above, piccolo-shrill, the skylark in ascendance, singing his heart out, who rose until he was a black dot in a vibrant sky, then parachuted down.
A phenologist will build up records over many years: the dates of the arrivals of new migrants, the opening of flowers, the first frogspawn. I find these daily, government-sanctioned ambles across home ground have sharpened me to such minute developments, the inching forward of the season as it takes uneven, tottering steps towards summer. The sweeping drama of the everyday.
