The jackdaws visited this hole every year without exception, though they most often ended up choosing the tree on the rocks behind the house that I thought of as theirs. They always gave the chimneys a good inspection too. One February, I returned from a few days away to find the pair occupying my bedroom, roosting on top of the wardrobe. They must have come down the chimney exploring its potential and then found themselves unable to fly back up such a narrow chute. Judging from all the feathers left on my windowsill they had been desperately attempting to make their escape through my closed window, so it was lucky for them that I came back when I did.
A pair of stock doves came too without fail, shyly and diffidently inspecting the potential nesting site in the ash-tree hole. They seemed to spend a long time considering the matter, weighing up the pros and cons. It was strange how a bird that looked so similar to the town pigeon could have such a different disposition; these birds seemed quint-essentially wild and wary. They provided another example of the precision of the rhythms that birds live by; they came for their visit each year just over a week after the curlews returned. I could predict their arrival in the ash to the day, or at most to within two days.
There was another annual visitor to the hole in the ash that was much more surprising; I could scarcely credit it when I first saw it. A snake-necked female goosander had come all the way up from the river. Goosanders are primitive-looking sawbill ducks that feed exclusively on fish, and seldom leave the water except to visit their tree-hole nests. They have very short legs and are obviously not designed for dry land. She would circle around and around my front fields, as if summoning up the courage, and then finally crash-land on to the tree, her wings flapping furiously, her feet scrabbling to gain a hold. She would spend many hours in my little clearing, carefully and methodically examining every tree in turn. She would even peer down my chimneys, and would sometimes decide this was a good spot for a break, perching a while immobile on the apex of my roof, like a straw bird on a thatch. When the goosanders’ eggs hatch, the young must leave the nest almost immediately and follow their mother to the safety of the river. It is hard to contemplate the journey this would entail were the bird to nest all the way up on my hillside. What an incredible obstacle course this would be for the newborn ducklings.
But this year they were all too late; the nesting hole had been appropriated by the owls who last year used the dying oak fifty yards away at the nearest corner of Penlan Wood. Or rather, by last year’s female, for this year she had a new mate: the pale grey male of last year had been usurped or had died. The female staked her claim incredibly early; just before New Year I saw her pay her first visit. It was dusk, and she had been calling relentlessly from within the dark depths of the wood. Then she flew over on silent wings to the ash and began to weigh up its possibilities, looking thoughtful, hesitant even. The whole time she kept on calling, a soft crooning call that I had not heard before and was audible only from close by. When the season came, and she began to incubate, I was able to watch her as she sat since the hole was not sunken, and as I worked in the garden I could see her eyes following me everywhere. And when I looked up and could no longer see her I was able to guess that the eggs had hatched. I donned my chainsaw goggles for protection and shinned up the tree for a look. The two tiny chicks must have been born that same day, the eggshells were still in the nest, and the proud parents had been busy collecting a buffet to welcome them, a pick-and-mix of one long-tailed field mouse, one short-tailed field vole, one bank vole and one pygmy shrew.
Because I knew the exact date of hatching, it was possible to arrange with the doctor at the field centre for the young birds to be ringed at precisely the right stage in their development. On the appointed day I scrambled back up the tree to the hole. Although the nest was nearly twenty feet up I didn’t need a ladder; the old tree was so knobbly and gnarly I could easily find footholds and handholds. The young owls were now enormous balls of down that looked disgruntled at being disturbed, and I put each one in turn into a cloth bag and lowered it on a string to the doctor waiting below. It would not be long before they were ready to leave the nest. Soon they were jostling for position at the entrance to their hole in order to be first when the food arrived. The opening was not wide enough for the two of them so inevitably they left the hole before they were able to fly. First one and then the other scrambled up the tree trunk to the first available bough, and there they perched, huddled side by side, blinking in the sunlight. They remained there for days, but eventually one day I returned from a walk to find them missing from their branch. It didn’t take long to locate them; they were calling for food from a tree about fifty yards away. I pictured them clambering down the tree trunk, then hopping and bounding across the hillside on their oversized feet, but in reality I had probably simply missed their first flight.
Spring was beginning to turn to summer, and the year’s lambs were teenagers now, in sheep years. They hung around in gangs and used the path to my cottage as a racetrack, thundering up and down it for hours each day. The woods were full to bursting with the year’s fledglings, a bonanza for the hungry hawks. The brood of redstarts from my box had left the nest; as I walked around the garden they sprang unexpectedly from the ground at my feet and whirred away, until their clockwork apparently ran down and they slumped suddenly back to earth.
Early one morning I was out in my front garden when I saw the unmistakable slate-grey back of a male sparrowhawk slipping low up the hillside straight towards me, right alongside the barbed-wire fence. He touched down momentarily on the rock just across the track — where the stoat had reared up and watched me that last winter gone — then with a single flick of his wings was on the fence post right before my eyes. I had never been so close to a sparrowhawk before, never imagined that I would be. His breast was delicately barred in pastel orange. His eyes were a piercing brilliant yellow, as were the clawed feet that clutched at the post convulsively. He was poised like a coiled spring, the intensity of his nervous tension was palpable. He ruffled his feathers, he twitched, he jerked his head from left to right until he saw his mark, and then he struck. In the front field was a short row of tangled hawthorns and hazels, the last relic of a long-gone hedge, and he hurled himself into it. Claws snapped shut, and when he lifted off a moment later and sailed down towards the wood, a lifeless bundle trailed from the gibbet of his dangling talon. A second, luckier fledgling redstart flew panicking out of the same hawthorns and straight towards me, heading I suppose for the safety of its home box. It didn’t quite make it; instead, it crashed into my leg and fell to the ground at my feet, cheeping piteously.
6. The Bird in the Bush
The goshawks caught me unawares. So far as I knew they had died out in Britain decades ago, and their stealthy return had passed me by completely. I don’t know how many times I must have watched them unknowingly, but it was certainly months before I gave in to the evidence of my senses, for I was watching a creature that I believed to be extinct.