Bill Oddie
The joys of spring are all the more welcome for being mixed with sadness.
Well now, the barnyard is busy in a regular tizzy, And the obvious reason is because of the season, Ma Nature’s lyrical with her yearly miracle, Spring, spring, spring.
Bing Crosby first sang those words about 60 years ago, and unfortunately the following verses feature some of the worst lyrics in the history of popular song.
Ah, yes siree, spring discloses, If it’s all one supposes, Wagging tails, rubbing noses, But it’s no bed of roses, And if for the stork you pine, Consider the porcupine, Who longs to cling, Keeping company is tricky, It can get pretty sticky, In the spring, spring, spring.
Euphoric gobbledegook indeed, peddling the cliché that spring is a time of relentless optimism and joy. Yet note the words of caution – “But it’s no bed of roses.” Primroses, maybe. And lesser celandine, wood anemones, wild garlic and bluebells. I have delightful memories of them all, but I have also had some sad and distressing springs. So too has nature.
It is in spring that we realise which of our migrant birds have returned in diminishing numbers. In the 1970s we became more and more alarmed as fewer and fewer whitethroats sang their scratchy little songs from local hedgerows. A large proportion of the British breeding population died in the droughts in Africa, and it is only in recent years that numbers have started to recover.
However, many other species continue to be affected by pesticide poisoning, habitat loss, mindless hunting and deadly
Spring 2015 weather. Most of this happens in winter, but we see the results in spring. It is perhaps the people who watch and study seabirds who are most nervous. A few years ago wild weather in the Atlantic and the North Sea meant that hundreds of puffins, guillemots and razorbills never made it home. There are few sadder sights than a spring outcrop carpeted in turf and decorated with thrift, but with silent burrows and empty ledges.
My most alarming experience of a ‘silent spring’ was when I arrived on a small Shetland Isle in late May, expecting to be dive-bombed and deafened by the arctic terns recently returned from wintering in the Antarctic, but there were none. A few days later a few stragglers arrived, but instead of plunge-diving for sandeels in the bay, they took to the fields and began foraging for earthworms. That year the colony raised not a single chick.
They say that worse things happen at sea, but it can also be pretty distressing inland, as when we were filming an item for Springwatch after a winter when a large area of the West Country had been flooded (sound familiar?). The waters had almost abated, but what had been lush meadowland had been reduced to something almost totally lifeless. Vegetation was drained of colour, flattened and clogged with mud. Trees by the river were festooned with detritus up to a height of several feet. There were no birds, flowers or insects. That year spring was drowned.
So how will Ma Nature fare this year? One thing is for sure, we won’t really know until it is nearly summer. Why do you think Springwatch airs in June?
Meanwhile, this is the season when many of us are asked to nominate our personal first sign of spring. Mine is the northern migration of meadow pipits – little brown birds flying over London’s Parliament Hill uttering squeaky calls so high-pitched that I can no longer hear them. A friend points them out, and it makes me joyful. Sadly, no one is likely to write a song about meadow pipits. Unless I do.
The call of Anthus pratensis Awakens my senses. Yes, it’s spring, spring, spring.
IT IS IN SPRING THAT WE REALISE WHICH OF OUR MIGRANT BIRDS HAVE RETURNED IN DIMINISHING NUMBERS.