I had been having a hard time sleeping
last night, and figured a little fresh air would do me good.
It was 4am, and there was a thick haze
in the sky negating any chance of doing any early morning astronomy.
But there was still plenty going on to keep my senses occupied,
although initially I couldn’t see any of it.
It started with me hearing a few high
pitched “seeeeep seeeep” noises coming from above somewhere. At
first I thought it was the sound of my own slightly cold-ridden nasal
breathing, but a little self suffocation soon proved that wrong. It
then occurred to me that it was possibly the sound of a redwing,
those most attractive of winter thrushes.
This was just the beginning. Despite
dawn still being the best part of three hours away, it seemed I had
walked out into Halloween morning’s Dawn Chorus.
I wandered down to the road, drawn by
the sound of some aggressive chirruping. And there on the actual main
road, what must have been a pair of robins were fighting over the
tarmac. The one who lived on the far side of the rode was clearly
winning; he drove his opponent back onto the pavement with a series
of aggressive flapping drives, and then mounted the pavement in
triumph as the defeated bird submitted and flew off, leaving the
victor to start feeding at the base of a tree.
Not far away a blackbird was rooting
around in fallen leaves in the gutter of the road, and others were
beginning to stir and call, but not sing, in the trees in the small
park opposite. The singing was being left to the robins. Above me a
bird settled in a tree, it was an eerily streetlamp illuminated great
tit, its face and chest looking orange in the glow.
As my eyes began to grow heavy,
woodpigeons and collared doves started to crash about in the foliage.
And as I headed back inside to successfully go to sleep, I reflected
on what pleasure being outside at this crazy, early hour had brought
me.
Copyright Cream Crackered Nature
31/10/2013
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