Steven Lovatt - Birdsong in a time of silence

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First published by Particular Books in 2021

Text copyright Steven Lovatt, 2021
Illustrations copyright Katie Marland, 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover design: Tom Etherington

ISBN: 978-0-241-49302-1

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To those imprisoned, who cannot hear birdsong.

The fuchsia tree

O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

The roses of dawn blossom over the sea.

Awaken, my blackbird, awaken, awaken!

And sing to me out of my red fuchsia tree!

Trad. Manx

Its six in the morning and still dark, the 24th of March, 2020. I wake early, and, knowing the children will soon be up, make the sudden decision to steal half an hours solitude in the park. From the dense latticework of trees and shrubs that clothe the wooded slope comes a constant scuttling through dead leaves, and a restless readjustment of twigs. The darkness is awake and vigilant; theres the warning tik-tik of an invisible robin from the bushes, and then the next second it appears on the path. Each individual movement of the bird, each wing-flick and pivot, is brisk and definite, yet the overall impression is one of nervousness and indecision. It leaps round once more on the spot, then flits back into the darkness. From close by comes a blast of song from a wren, its harsh trill like coarse twine zipping over a flywheel. The air is cool, not cold, and smells deliciously of earth and moss. With every moment, almost visibly, more light slips into the air as the sun creeps closer to the horizon.

Theres a sudden disturbance from the deeper shade, and a blackbird comes careering out with a mad clatter, as though a fragment of the shadow itself had been flung away from some explosive centre and taken the form of the bird that now pauses in alert rest on the great arm of the beech tree below which Im standing, pressed quiet against the trunk. Although I can see it only in silhouette, a cut-out in stiff black paper against the felty shade of the trees, its evidently agitated. It flicks about the bough, dipping then raising its wings, and tilting its head all the while in response to something I cant sense. After a few seconds of this twitching the bird seems to experience some sort of inner resolution, and as the first beam of grey light wakes the colours of the tree it raises its head and lets out a quiet phrase of song. Spring has arrived.

The day before my early walk in the park, the prime minister ordered a shut-down of public life that would entirely change society as wed known it. Travel was forbidden; schools closed and playground gates were locked; cafs and pubs were shuttered; and doctors surgeries turned into fortresses, plastered with warning signs, only accessible by phone. A new animal, a microscopic animal, given the name Covid-19, was racing around the world faster than even the sleepless global media could track it. Although invisible, it spread fear as effectively as any dragon from a folk tale. Nobody knew where it was, but it took its tribute of anxiety and silence all the same. So it was that, by government decree, normal life was suspended.

Where I live, compliance was immediate and total. All traffic noise ceased, and you could hear litter scuffing down the empty streets. Paper rainbows began to appear in windows, painted as a token of hope by children kept indoors; but of the children themselves there was no sign. It felt less like a catastrophe than an aftermath, as if nine-tenths of the population had disappeared overnight. Groping for language to understand what was happening, both television pundits and ordinary people fell back on a wartime vocabulary of discipline and solidarity. Yet the strangeness was amplified tenfold by the difficulty of reconciling this lockdown with the sudden coming of the most glorious spring that anyone could remember. After a long winter of gales and rain came still, warm days. Our spring bulbs emerged, magnolias brought out their menorahs, and even as the supermarket shelves were emptied of dried pasta, yeast and toilet roll, astonishing scents and colours were being finalized for display just an inch below the surface of the mild, wet earth.

But most of all, we began to notice the birdsong. A little tentative and sputtering at first, by the end of March it filled the air. Broadcast from aerials and hedge-tops, a rising choir of chirps, trills and warbles brought life to gardens and echoed off house-fronts, shuttered shops and bland retail silos, seeming suddenly obtrusive with no motor traffic to smother it. Some bird calls are present all year around, and these are among the easiest to recognize. Everyone knows the crows harsh croak, and one neednt live near the coast to hear the oily yelp of gulls. But with the awakening spring came other songs that were harder to place. One sounds a little like a five-pence coin being dropped over and again to skitter on a varnished table. Another resembles a fly-past of wind-chimes. Yet another bird makes a jingle of notes, like water from a fountain, but somehow feeble, as if the water pressure were too low. As lockdown continued, we became curious about these calls, and peered down from balconies or went out into the garden to see what had made them. And as the days passed, I was able to take advantage of my good fortune to live in a green, coastal town and within the bounds of the permitted daily exercise reawaken an interest in birds that had been pressed to the margins of my life by the responsibilities of parenthood and work.

I started watching birds when I was seven, by which time Id already passed through various other intense but short-lived enthusiasms for cars, dinosaurs, spacecraft and warplanes. I dont really know why the bird phase stuck, but I probably owe it to my parents, both of whom encouraged my interest and soon became enthusiasts in their own right. This was in Birmingham, which you mightnt think an ideal place for birdwatching, but we lived a half-hours walk from a nature reserve, and Id go down there most weekends or after school, with my father or, increasingly, on my own. I poured into this hobby the same vast, nerdish endowment that Id previously invested in the cars and planes, and by my early teens I could identify most British birds by sight and sound, my knowledge growing as we came across different species on trips to the countryside and coast. It probably peaked around the age of eighteen, but the interest never disappeared altogether, though my opportunities to indulge it lessened as time went on. Then suddenly, this spring, being out of work and with a bit of time to look and listen, and perhaps as a side-effect of the great bewilderment and shift of priorities that seemed to be affecting the whole country, I felt my curiosity about birds reawaken.