F resh point of views on the familiar are constantly gratifying. Out botanising in the late afternoon, we discovered ourselves rushing up the high south side of this deep-cut dale till we were nearly at its crest, and I understood that I had actually never ever seen the valley from this angle prior to.
We discovered flowers in abundance: sneaking thyme and heath bedstraw, moonwort, rockroses, orange-flecked inside their yellow cups, and kidney vetch gone to seed. Similarly the cowslips, those “secrets of paradise” that at Easter were nodding in the breeze now stood upright at attention, their mild yellow flowers turned brown and tough. We likewise discovered what we were searching for: sandwort, though very little of it, fringing the Stygian gloom of old lead-mine shafts.
Sitting for a minute above the slope, I scanned the depths listed below. Generally I would be strolling down there, hemmed in by trees, the walls of the dale pushing in. Now it was expanded below me, like a living map.
It’s an excellent temptation to get as near to nature as we perhaps can, to see the elaborate information, like the crisp seedpods of the cowslips close by. However there’s a lot to be stated for broadening the view. Listed below me was a gang of home martins working the air above the stream, accelerating and down in a tight oval, white rumps capturing the sun. This, in the meantime, was the period of their world, and I might see it all at a look.
Darting out below them was a grey wagtail, its compass much tighter, flying briefly from the bank to midstream and after that returning. Grey wagtails reproduce from early April, a little ahead of their cousins the pied wagtail and yellow wagtail, however they will have 2 and even 3 broods, and this one was most likely still feeding young.
A wagtail’s tail is extremely meaningful. Each flick and slant suggests something: desire, recommendation or worry. However from my perch I might enjoy how, as the bird concentrated on its victim, the tail spread and angled, like a commentary on the water’s nonstop modification.
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