Peak passage.

I’ve been building up to a blog over the past week or so: I was going to detail the various arrivals and sightings over the past week or so of my daily legally sanctioned stroll from the house along the Devil’s Dyke. That might have to wait though, as this morning’s walk had more incident than the past week combined.

I’ve found by far the most effective form of social distancing, other than just staying in the house, is to get up and out before the joggers, strollers and dogists have even considered setting out – out here on the perimeter of the Ely10 circle I’m pretty much guaranteed not to see another human before 8am. And so it was that shortly after dawn this morning my trusty Australian sidekick and I were on our usual route, having already encountered chiffs, ‘caps, and a newly arrived willow warbler. Next was a flyover yellow wag and then the Dyke’s first whitethroat of the spring, jabbering incoherently from a patch of bramble – this provoked a weary sigh: I like this brief period in early April when I can enjoy the song of the early arrivals before the whitethroats’ incessant chuntering and churring becomes ubiquitous along the Dyke, but it looks like this blissful time is about to end for another year. We put this one quickly behind us and pressed on to enjoy the relative peace and quiet while it lasted.

The Australian, though a fast learner, isn’t fully familiar with the patterns of an English spring yet, so I was explaining that at this time one must meticulously check the blackbirds foraging at the edge of the sheep fields, just in case one isn’t quite as black as the rest. It was to my great delight that this tactic unexpectedly paid off in style, as I raised my bins to the latest dark Turdus just as it turned to reveal a crisp crescent of white. It proceeded to be most obliging, extracting various worms and leatherjackets from the short turf as it refueled for the next leg of its migration. Far better views than those of the lone rouzel to grace the Dyke last year, and best ever views of the species for the Australian.

Having got the day off to a flyer with this lad, we continued and, while I was scrutinising a corn bunting, newly returned to its favoured song perch, the Australian piped up with a query regarding a more distant bird along the same field boundary. A glance with the bins revealed something that looked a bit falcony, but not really that much bigger than the chubby bunting. The subsequent scope views duly revealed a female merlin, peering off across the fields and head-bobbing enthusiastically at something. With a final nod of confirmation, she was off, tearing low across the winter wheat with the species’ usual athleticism, bearing down on a far-off skylark. Eschewing the its larger cousins’ energy-saving, high altitude approach, it approached in typically gung-ho fashion, hugging the crop, accelerating for all it was worth and then engaging the lark in an ascending tail-chase. The lark could not match the merlin’s blistering speed, and was quickly hauled in, but it slammed on the handbrake and avoided the first attack at the last second by what looked like millimetres. The falcon immediately flared wings and tail and converted its considerable speed into height, heading vertical before stalling, folding its wings and dropping back over into a tight loop and a more peregrine-like stoop, but the skylark was up to the task, evading once, twice, then a third time – to a chorus of oohs, ahhs and shouted encouragement from the Australian (no friend of hapless passerines this Antipodean) – before the merlin decided, much to the Australian’s disappointment, that this was more trouble than it was worth and gave up the chase.

Pressing on, our next oddity was perhaps the most unusual (and underwhelming) of the lot, and unlike the earlier birds, a patch tick – a couple of house sparrows, a long way from the nearest house, that headed off high to the north-west.

Three wheatears, including a really big, bright Greenland type, were on their favoured fenceline over towards Swaffham Prior, and the last remaining fieldfare chattered manically away to itself in a hedge by the horse paddocks, having not got the memo about leaving with the rest of the gang last night. The local kestrel alighted on a nearby fence post, more obliging, if less dramatic, than the earlier falcon; its leisurely flop onto an unfortunate beetle not quite stirring the blood in the same way as the earlier high-stakes aerial pursuit.

Time to turn for home, lest the authorities catch up with us for overstaying our welcome; the sight of a couple of distant luminous Lycra-clad joggers approaching in the distance providing further impetus. There was still time for an unseasonal wandering jay to put in an appearance, dropping in from a very un-jay-like altitude to one of the hedgerows, before being encouraged to move on out across the open fields by a couple of local magpies. Finally, on the last stretch across the fields to home, a group of very accommodating golden plovers were sitting in the wheat, the first signs of heat haze beginning to blur their spangled plumage. 

To my Peak-trained eye these, like the ring ouzel and merlin earlier, always seem out of place away from the bilberry and heather, but fortunately for them, they are under no restrictions on their movements and will be back in the uplands before long. Sadly, the same can’t be said for the Australian and me, and this looks likely to be the first spring of my adult life that I won’t be able to spend some time with the ouzels and merlins, redstarts and wood warblers, pied flycatchers and all the other familiar birds of my youth in the Peak District, so we’re fortunate when we can catch these passing glimpses of such birds as they pass fleetingly through our lowland lockdown.