Fingringhoe Wick...

I visited Fingringhoe Wick last Saturday, the day after the funeral. It was good to hear the nightingales, even though the reserve was rather crowded. I shared a hide with a guy who looked - and sounded - like an east end villain, but who had nevertheless developed an interest in birds. His young grand-daughter seemed more interested in slamming the door as hard as she could, to see how many birds she could frighten away. “Shut it, you noisy little cow”, he said cheerfully. 

I went back a few days later, when the reserve was less like a children’s playground. There were plenty of nightingales; people stood and listened, rapt. To us the song sounds yearning, valedictory, but that’s just our anthropomorphism. The nightingale’s message may be simpler: “This is my tree, fuck off”. A guy with a camera and huge lens said he wanted to get a shot of a nightingale. Good luck with that, I thought; I couldn’t even see one. The highlight of the morning was seeing a barn owl being chased by a kestrel, and my first sightings of marsh harriers this year. As well as the nightingales, there were plenty of other songbirds… particularly blackcaps and whitethroats…

The reedbed at Fingringhoe Wick...