It is tempting to be competitive when nature-watching. If a friend who lives in a built-up area says, “We had a goldfinch in the garden today!”, the wrong response is: “Ah yes, we have a charm of goldfinches in the trees and field next to us”, thereby displaying your privileged position and knowledge of collective nouns for birds.
Far better to keep quiet about that and share your relief that wildlife, if not exactly thriving, is surviving in both the town and the countryside.
That said, and not wishing to show off, for a couple of days last month we did have a goldcrest in the garden, right next to the kitchen window. It was fluttering erratically around a bush, and we thought at first it must be unwell. But it seems more likely that it saw its reflection in the window and was courting it.
The 19th century nature writer, Richard Jefferies, admitted that, even for him, it was difficult to identify, and remember, more than a small number of new wildflowers each year. This month we noticed for the first time a patch of delicate lilac-white flowers in O’Malley’s field next to his aggregate recycling site. We were able to identify them as cuckoo flowers, also known as Lady’s Smock.
“Cuckoo” flowers, because they appear at the same time as the bird, although we have not heard any yet this year. Any sign of them south of the A40?
The 20th century writer, Geoffrey Grigson, when describing the background to “Lady’s Smock”, and its association with milkmaids, their smocks, the cuckoo and the Virgin Mary, includes this playfully mad sentence on the derivation of “smock”:
“The ‘smick’, more usual as ‘smicket’, of the name ‘smick-smock’ was another word for smock, and ‘smickering’, and to ‘smicker’, were words of amorous looks and purposes.”
Returning to birds, it has to be admitted that watching nature is not always a pleasant experience. This poem combines observations from both town and country:
One for sorrow, two for joy
As air warms and threat of frost recedes,
eggs hatch and the eye-pecking magpie
comes poking about to murder fledglings;
a clever corvid who with her mate
has discovered the utter safety
of roundabouts, isles full of noises
and fumy airs that seemingly hurt not,
maintained the while by youth offending teams.
Elsewhere in a scramble of elder,
hazel and bramble pairs of finches
raise up to five chicks, their legacy
of silver and gold in a secret
location never to be told.