In years to come, if anyone asks, I will tell them about a March day down on the old railway line.
Out of the bushes came a silly, seesaw song, the singer a scrap of a brown bird that stayed hidden from sight. That chiffchaff had flown in from Africa, passing over Spain, where so many people have suffered, through France, where millions more live in fear and confusion, then across the Channel to our own benighted country.
So many of these birds are streaming north now, followed by a sizzle of chatter on telephone lines and social media, the like of which I have never heard before, as human spirits are lifted to say: “I’ve just heard my first chiffchaff.”
What does the sound of our first migrant signify? Eight years ago, I was coming to the end of writing a book, a true story, about young men who were enduring captivity with no end date, behind barbed wire in German prisoner of war camps. They kept their sanity and gained comfort and pleasure watching birds and other wildlife. As one of them wrote when it was all over: “One of the chief joys of watching them in prison was that they inhabited another world than I.”
The chiffchaff sang, over and over, and now it was an accompaniment to another diversion. I looked up towards the blue sky into a sallow bush fizzing with yellowish green catkins and alive with honeybees foraging for nectar. A brimstone butterfly flew across the path, then a peacock. I would have sightings to report, joy to impart, a sharing slice of good news in a virtual network that reaches from one home to the next. And eight years since I thought it impossible, at a time when I have been asked to self-isolate, I have gained just an inkling of the solace that those long-ago men found, making the best of the worst situations.
I was woken at two this morning by a sodding tawny owl hooting outside, and again at five by a blackbird. But I don’t mind. Because even though there may come a time when we have to shut our doors, we can still open our windows, listen, and remember that the world will keep turning.
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