Upper North Tyne Valley,
Northumberland.
(Written 1st May 2022)
The wood is alive at dawn – my body just one small presence amidst the singing, sentient world. Birdsong is pouring down through the dim green, as unstoppable as a waterfall. I cannot see the birds, but the tree canopy is alive with their trilling, swelling the wood with purposeful calls. Each song is clear, distinct, yet all claiming the space at once. The chorus reverberates through the stillness like bells peeling from different church spires, chiming together in cascading rhythms.
Through the tall beech trees, rain is gently falling, a dampness descending with gravity. It spots my jacket with a muted pattering, slow-release droplets plopping through the draping boughs, moistening the rising carpet of fern fiddles, wood spurge, celandine and bluebell leaves around my feet.
For days now, I have been nudged awake by a robin trickling its first notes into the melting dark, inviting the day to open with tender solemnity. It seems to light a touch paper prompting other birds to join in, and soon there are other stirrings, as an infectious unravelling of song spills out of the trees, triggered by light.
This morning, it would have been so easy to roll over and fall asleep again, lulled by the external wash of sound, knowing that it would continue the next morning, and the morning after that, following the incremental arc of increasing daylight. A daily occurrence, carrying on beyond my human concerns. But today, I was determined to get up early, step into the wood and experience the dawn chorus fully.
And so I find myself sitting here at 5 am, bundled up in a raincoat with a tea cup clasped in one hand, rubbing my eyes and gazing upwards. The old beech trees tower overhead like the great stone pillars of a cathedral, and seem even bigger with their fresh spring foliage. The song is coming from somewhere up there in the mesh of branches, filling the clearing. I am here for it all, waking up slowly with the halo of luminous leaves, soft flags hanging, and the flurries of feathered winging in the boughs high above me. I feel very small.
It is difficult to know which way to turn at first, or which part to listen to. There seem to be so many different components of song, location and direction converging at once. In one way, it sounds like some form of random chaos, disorganised and undirected, yet it has all the harmonious and joyful qualities of a flowing stream – the natural energy of water finding its way. Strong, melodious, and continuous – it is as if different symphonies are being performed at once, lifting the wood into a massive and glorious sonic presence, and me with it. And how could I not be swept into it, bathed by such intense, sweet music?
For a while I am completely rooted to the spot, peering up and barely breathing, trying to take it all in. I feel like I almost need to pinch myself that I am not imagining that something as sublime as this could be taking place so close to my kitchen door. Nature’s great soundtrack is at full volume, right here, just a few steps from the house. I have heard about the beauty of the dawn chorus before, listened to snatches of it on recordings, but this is the real thing. It really is this exquisite. It really is this loud.
Gradually different strands of song begin to be recognisable. I can distinguish the graceful babbling of a blackbird, resuming evensong from where it left off at dusk. A chiff chaff shuttling its bobbins back and forth, syncopating with a great tit, and there is a song thrush somewhere, gushing a whole repertoire of canticles. A wood pigeon coos on and off over the whole, while a pheasant honks intermittent base notes from the ground. Suddenly, a great spotted woodpecker is drilling at a tree trunk behind me. And then there is a crow rasping, and the strong flush of its wings as its cuts overhead.
As I listen more closely, I notice there are tiny pauses too, phrases of song stop-starting here and there, like the small gaps that we feel before breathing in and breathing out, micro- moments of stillness within the rhythm of calls, out of which distinct notes are newly born, a song returns and is repeated, and a fresh refrain begins. It is self-perpetuating, like the cyclical liquidity of a water wheel.
It seems to me that the calls are so repetitive and insistent, they have an almost urgent quality about them. But then it is all about being heard. These vital marks of existence are filling the airspace as fully as possible in a limited time available, a spell that has to be cast before the break of day. After all, important communication and information is being vocalised and these accoustic signatures are broadcasts of territory, intentions for connection with a mate, statements of belonging.
From a human perspective, it is one huge roll call, announcing the status of bird species here, one morning in May. The volume of song indicates all that is flourishing in this patch of deciduous woodland with its stands of ancient oak, beech, Scots pine and silver birch. Each bird call is occupying its own deliberate niche in the soundscape and is playing its part in the life of the wood.
Yet, as much as I would like to, I am unable to distinguish all the different birds that I am hearing. There are some calls that I simply do not recognise and I feel some frustration and disappointment at my inability to interpret the threads of song more distinctly. But then, I have not come out here to know everything, but to experience the secret life of the wood at dawn, and simply immerse myself in this great spectacle of nature, close to my home. Right now, allowing the umbrella of song to drum through me is enough. I have flung the sense doors open. There is no need for names.
All of my awareness is just where I am in these precise moments of the dawn, under the trees, receiving sound. Each note is clearly enunciated, like the droplets of rain, arising and passing in the space of awareness. Everything is relaxing into itself – the stilling pool of the mind making room for each filament of song to arrive and be heard as it is, echoing through the morning air. And there is something about being showered by the energy of this invisible singing that invites spaciousness, and allows me to be carried in its overflow, and fly beyond it.
You could say this listening, is a different kind of knowing – pure perception, coming from tissue and bone. My whole body is becoming attuned to the vibrations of sound, letting it all soak in. I am in the birdsong, and the birdsong is in me, the way the trees are absorbing the rain, and I am breathing in moist air, and the rain is peppering my jacket and trickling down my hands. Everything belongs and is connected and coherent in these moments. It is just the way things are.
From somewhere deep in the wood, I catch the faint tick-tocking of a cuckoo, beating out the business of its arrival across the valley like a metronome. I know nothing of its long and dangerous journey all the way from Africa to here. Another not knowing. But hearing its call rising amongst the trees for the first time this spring feels like a celebration of all that is coming home and falling into place this morning. Each additional bird call is significant, messaging survival, relationship to place, new cycles of life and possibility. And so the cuckoo enters the dance like the piece of a missing jigsaw, another sign of thriving, a species that is present and not absent, pronouncing all that is well, because it is here.
Wood pigeons continue to pull their scarves back and forth, rubbing and softening the air. The birdsong is becoming a companionable blanket around me, gathering me into its loose script of gossip, chatter and home making. As I sit and listen, the rim of morning light is moving through the trees with growing momentum, a curtain lifting on the stage, the orchestra in full swing, revealing a woodland scene with its palette of greens. There is nothing to do but let the birds continue to reveal the humming life of the morning and tell me that it’s May, in tones that are easy, free-flowing, and as soothing as my own breathing.
