A distant Speke Hall on a glorious February morning
It is a beautiful early February morning of azure, cloud-free sky and a silvery frost on the ground, and after seeing a raven yesterday I have a desire to go and visit the pair that call Speke Hall their home, to see how they are getting on with their nest-building.
Frost on the ground at Speke Hall meadows
Parking in the ‘to let’ office car park, I walk through the small, scrubby woodland and across the field. The frosty ground is hard to the touch of my boots – it’s like walking on concrete, iron or steel, when usually there would be some ‘give’, a spongy quality to the ground. On the path, the fallen russet oak leaves are delightfully rimed with frost. As I notice this, a raven flies overhead, its mouth open, though I can’t see what it is carrying. I quickly approach the pine trees where the pair usually nest, and angle myself so I’m not looking into the sun, then I raise bins to eyes: the raven alights on a bough fringed with dark green needles and settles onto the nest, neck straining to re-arrange twigs around it. A second bird ‘kronks’ from afar and then flies in, too.
I leave them to their nesting and enter Stockton’s Wood, scene of last year’s sparrowhawk-watching experiences. It’s quiet at sparrowhawk clearing at first, but then a carrion crow’s unusual high-pitched calls from the bare branches of a nearby tree brings in at least 10 other crows, rowing across the sky in ones and twos. A commotion of crows! They shift supplely amongst the branches, converse with each other, then leave to mass over the frosty fields. Is something amiss in crow world or are they just telling stories? A ‘storytelling’ of crows, so Google tells me, is one of the birds’ collective names – along with ‘murder’ and others. How I wish I could understand their tales!
Clarion call from the trees
Standing in this clearing, I think how different it feels, not only because the trees are bare and consequently it is much lighter and I can see much further, but also because of the sadness I’m carrying – how strange that emotions can so colour a physical place. My wild heart is dampened with sorrow at a friend’s grief and suffering, and the pleasure I took in this wild place is diminished by it. There is a huge contrast between the experiences we shared last summer and how life is now. I stand with these feelings for a few moments, then, in an attempt to subdue them, I retreat from the clearing, back past the now-quiet ravens, and onto Speke-Garston Coastal Reserve.
Looking towards Cammell Laird in the distance
It’s quiet here, too, apart from the planes taking off from the airport, so I head down the old runway towards the gantry, noting goldfinch and greenfinch, and a song thrush singing from the bushes. The tide is in, so there are only teal and mallard bobbing on the water – no waders feeding at the moment. I think about walking further, confident that what will soon be mud that has to be waded through or bypassed totally, is this morning hard, crisp as the air and frost around it. Yet, on the wettest, barest bits of exposed, uncovered soil, the crispness is a mere coating and my boots sink surprisingly, just a little, in the bike ruts and footsteps heralding the passage of others before me, and the going looks worse ahead, so I execute a U-turn, and traverse the paths around the sailing club building instead, where two female reed buntings are showing nicely (as birders say!).
Millpond Mersey and the gantry
On days like these, it’s clear that spring is coming: the warmer sunlight, the birdsong, the tiny bulbs poking out from the ground – I hope the wild spirit of this besieged place survives for a very long time.