Spring a small antidote to the surreal and tragic events unfolding.

"In the bowling alleys, in the easy living, something good got lost along the way."

Paul Buchanan, The Blue Nile, 'High'.

 I can't think of a song, offhand, that more aptly sums up these times than 'High', though it was actually written in 2004. Check it out, it actually is uplifting despite the truth of the words. Anyway, back to reality. I normally don’t care much for the sound of screaming children, but hearing the local primary school (a very small and very exclusive one, maybe that’s the real reason they’re so happy?) hollering away on their break with child-like abandon is refreshingly soothing. Granted if I were literally next door it may be less agreeable to my sensitive ears, but the nature of their positive energy is uplifting. They’re following their instinct, expressing themselves, living in the moment with a sense of joy, freedom and frivolity. They’re too young to be worn out by the latest calamity to manifest itself, this virus which is causing all kinds of bad things to occur. And too young to care. Maybe that’s the luxury of youth but regardless they are doing something which the rest of the world isn’t. They’re going a bit crazy in the best possible way. The majority of humanity, in contrast, is going totally crazy in the worst possible way. The exuberance I’ve heard today has much in common with the birds singing. Have you watched a bird sing? It’s equally full-on and equally instinctive. They’re really going for it. The Three Tenors had microphones; the birds have no need. Take the wren, for example; it’s a tiny bird, with an outrageously powerful singing voice.  

    The mild winter and spring (so far at least) have pushed nature’s plans forward a little. Blackbirds have been singing for at least a month and I saw a female yesterday gathering grass for her nest. I’ve seen bumble bees, on milder days, for at least a month now. The problem for a bee that awakes in February is that there’s no pollen, so they hopefully go back into hibernation, but I dare say this year a fair few perished when it got a bit colder again. Pink cherry blossoms are already present at least two weeks ahead of schedule. Buds on the trees, in general, have arrived early. Today is a delightful mid-March day, it’s not particularly mild, but the sun is warming with each passing day as it gets higher in the sky. After a more normal winter, days like these would feel quite radical; seeing bees for the first time - after five months of cold and drudgery – and hearing birds sing as nature awakes from its slumber. But this year the natural world has been led a merry dance by the unseasonal weather. It’s not been excessively mild much of the time, it seems to me, though the figures say otherwise, just consistently so. The word benign springs to mind, no pun intended. In Northern and Eastern Europe, it has been excessively mild, the USA too. The reason - for those of you who are interested - is a phenomenon called the Polar Vortex. It’s essentially a circle of cold air above the Arctic. This year it has refused to budge, making it incredibly cold there and incredibly mild throughout the rest of the northern hemisphere, Alaska aside, being right next to this pool of bitter air. It also creates an extremely powerful jet stream that’s made Western Europe very stormy as well. We’re in stormy times, literally and metaphorically, so the blue sky, the calm and the warmth of the sun are most welcome. As are the birds and their song, I must repeat. Only three or four have started where I am and mostly early in the morning: the robin, the blackbird, the thrush (both mistle and song) and the wren. But the dawn chorus is slowly building to its crescendo in May. Of course, it’s not merely warm temperatures that encourage the birds to start singing, it’s the light. The circadian clock, an internal meter, present in both mammals and birds, recognizes the longer days as a more reliable marker than warm temperatures. 

    More unusual visitors to the garden recently have included some long-tailed tits coming to the nut dispenser and the odd jay. Long tailed, like their blue, great and coal ‘cousins’, share the familiar tit attributes; being gregarious, vocal and colourful. With their extremely long - as logic would dictate - narrow and rectangular tail, they are unmistakable; like ‘a ball of wool on a knitting needle’, it has been described. They also have a unique trilling call and rarely appear alone, more often found in groups of several individuals, and sometimes with other tit species as well. They’re fairly common, especially when there is woodland nearby, so keep an eye out. The jay, one of my favourite birds, is actually a crow. This normally surprises people due to their strikingly beautiful plumage - a sort of pastel-pink, white, blue and black combination - a far cry from the classic black crow which is unlikely to win a beauty competition. Appearance aside, other than their aesthetically challenging call - common to all the Corvus species, a rather hysterical shriek - the main clue to their family tree is in their behaviour. They are highly clever like all crows. Chancers, furtive in their movement and very aware, they give the impression of always being on the make. Jays are more secretive than the more common black crows, however, and less approachable so your chances of being able to watch them are small if you don’t have a garden window to hide behind. They particularly like acorns so if there are oak trees in the vicinity, your odds of a sighting are higher. Again, once spotted, never forgotten.  

Granted, birds and birdsong cannot fix the world's problems directly, but it seems to me that they can - to a degree at least - change the way we react to them, the problems that is. That goes for the rest of nature too: Spring flowers appearing, "buzzing things" (thanks Baldrick) buzzing, a beautiful sunset. Nothing is forced, nothing done in panic. They just let it happen. The natural world can't itself build skyscrapers, make a tiramisu or play a great guitar solo, but it still has much to teach. If only we could pay a little more attention to it. And listen to the Blue Nile too!