Staying still and attentive are thought to be essential to appreciate nature. Whereas I, cycling west on quiet lanes outside Kelso, was neither. Somewhere to my left was the Tweed. Somewhere further left lay the Cheviot Hills. Far to my right were the Lammermuirs. Between these ranges lies some of the best arable land in the Borders, land worth fighting for, and with castles to prove it. None of this was on my mind. I was too blissed out on the cool air of early morning meeting my face at just the right speed.
Then something began to percolate. A sound chipping away at my inattention. I knew that sound, that insistent one-tone crescendo, the “little bit of bread” of a yellowhammer, with its final cheesy payoff. It’s a song that, unlike many others, extends deep into summer. Yet there was something unusual about it, something I couldn’t immediately place. Then the penny dropped. I was covering a kilometre every four or five minutes, but at no stage for a considerable time had I stopped hearing a yellowhammer.
On my usual Peak District patch, we have the same subspecies of this delightful bunting, with his lemon bonbon head resting on streaked brown shoulders, but it’s rare I hear one. North Derbyshire, all stone walls and silage leys, doesn’t suit them. Now it felt as though each yellowhammer was handing me on to the next. Simply put, they were everywhere.
Given how numbers have collapsed, especially in southern England, to experience such an abundance was uplifting. What was going right? The female builds her nest low in thick hedges, ideally with a wet drainage channel to provide insects for their chicks in the days after hatching. A generous field margin also helps. The numbers here suggested farmers doing the right things, like clearing ditches, and at the right time, like hedge cutting. “So, leave it still,” as John Clare humbly pleaded in The Yellowhammer’s Nest, “A happy home of sunshine, flowers and streams.”
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
