I'm outside. As I sit and write this at 7.30pm, it is almost dark, very warm for the end of September and to my right a blackbird is singing. I've looked but I cannot find where he is perched. Yet he is there, somewhere; a libretto of notes pervade the gathering dusk, his flute-like calling seeming at odds with the lateness of the year. Blackbirds sing in spring don't they. Well yes, but also at dusk throughout the rest of the year, like tonight with an occasional tik tik social call to add to the melody. An hour ago the local jackdaws were in full voice overhead, the jak-a-jak contact call as they fly overhead in social and family groups. A fitting end both to today, to the summer and this blog which sadly has only 2 more entries to go.
Having not been over to Wiltshire for 3 months until last Friday, today saw me back there for the second time in 48 hours. This time it was to accompany Julie to the Pewsey Vale Riding Centre where she was on a 2 hour hack over the hills. This left me with a 2 hour window of opportunity. Coffee first but then I spent about 30 minutes watching swallows and house martins gathering along the southern slopes of the Pewsey Downs. I'd noticed before we left around 100 swallows on a line behind the house. In Wiltshire however there were 1-2,000 over a field. Perched like squabbling children on wires they preened and fidgeted until either more arrived to add to the cacophony or, as happened frequently, a buzzard or carion crow would hassle them. Then, they'd shoot off in a ragged ball of energy, swooping and diving away over the fields or behind a spinney, to return to the wires a few minutes later. More arrived, and although I was about 400 yards away, the chattering hirundines were raising the volume to 11. Then just before 1pm, they took off and headed en masse over the riding stables and were gone, save for a few stragglers. Summer's end before me, they are presumably heading now to one of the south coast roost sites to gather and then at first light if the conditions remain favourable, they'll be gone.
I once witnessed something similar on Ramsey Island off Tenby a few years back now. It was early October and I stood looking at some seal loafing about in the sea below. Suddenly about 1-200 swallows appeared right overhead and proceeded to fly along the cliffs first one way and then back, maybe for half a dozen times and then in a chattering exit they flew out over the sea and in minutes I'd lost them in the binoculars. Bird migration is an absolutely amazing process - those swallows on Ramsey and the ones today registering the landforms that will guide them back in 6 months. A process which has been happening long before humans witnessed this act of avian ordinance.
Now at 8pm it is dark, the first fingers of night cooling the warmth of the day. Breathless night begins as a mother of pearl crescent moon is peeking from behind a shrub while a late tractor passes by, its trailer laden with forage from a field not far away. The year is waning, yet life carries on. It has been a good day, and it's been a good year to write this blog. Hurry back swallows, hurry back....
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