birdsong

I was woken this morning by the chickens making a racket.  Or that may not be true.  I awoke suddenly, and was aware that there was a noise coming from the hen house, but perhaps I woke because it was light, and heard the chickens once I was awake.  It was the sort of chattering, vaguely pained shrieking noise they make in the afternoons, when they want to be let out into the garden, or in the middle of the day if their water has run out.  I considered whether they sounded so distressed that something might actually be going on outside, but decided not, and sure enough the noise stopped after a while.  When, after showering and sorting out the cats' breakfast, I went to let the chickens into their run in the usual way, the four of them that are not broody trundled out of the pop hole and ate their pieces of brown bread as if nothing had happened.  I decided they must have been indulging in some sort of chicken version of the dawn chorus.

There are skylarks on the neighbouring farm.  We heard them before we saw them, their distinctive arching song ringing out over the wheat, then managed to spot the leaping dots high above.  There was more than one bird singing, and on the return leg of our walk we disturbed a pair on the ground not far down the track from us, that swooped away in their distinctive dipping arcs low over the onions.  It seems rather prosaic to imagine a lark nesting in the middle of a field of onions.  The first time I heard them sing was in the bare chalk country of Wiltshire, and to me they are still mythical birds, another aspect of the white horses carved in the hillsides, the bronze age forts, and other-worldly paintings of Ravilious or Nash.  Which goes to show how one's first, childhood exposure to something can make a lasting impression, since I have heard many more larks singing over the sea walls of Essex than I have had trips to Wiltshire.

We saw another pair of birds on the track we couldn't identify.  They walked with tiny steps like an especially effete comedy waiter, dipping their tails, and my best guess was that they were grey wagtails.  They were wagtail shaped, but larger than the pied, with yellow tinged breasts.  There used to be a pair at the plant centre, which when I first saw them I assumed must be yellow wagtails, having heard there was such a thing, but my colleagues who knew much more about birds than I did assured me that these were the grey ones, which are in fact quite yellow, and that the yellow ones were much more yellow than that, and rare.

The tawny owls have been very vocal.  They were making a great noise close to the house last night, according to the Systems Administrator who stayed up later than I did, and they've been calling during the day as well.  I am delighted to have them on the premises, though I know never to have a look if I ever think I've found a nest.  Apart from the fact that I think it is illegal to disturb them, they are fierce birds that will go for your eyes when they attack you.

I still hanker after a pet little owl, inspired by Gerald Durrell's account of his free range Scops owl in Corfu, but I have to admit it would not get on with the cats.