essex naturalist

The robin (Erithacus rubecula).

I cycle to work and some mornings, if I am out of the door early enough, I walk part of the journey through one of my local woods. It is a wood in a chiefly urban environment and busy road passes one side of the wood. If you were to approach it during the morning rush hour, you would hear the previously distant sound of the traffic thickening towards a throbbing drone with each step closer to the woodland edge, rising so as to begin to overtop the sounds of waking wood. Today though, I was reminded of the resilience of wild things. Two wren, probably only a few dozen metres apart, whirred their claims to each other, of their place in the wood, with that inimitable outpouring of frantic song. And a robin too, with his altogether more patient delivery of hurried cadence. Each, with their different qualities, penetrated the low, all encompassing din of the traffic, casting lines of clarity through the muddle of noise. They spoke to me of voices of reason.

It reminded me also of an excerpt from my book ‘Never a Dull Moment‘ (if you will allow me the indulgence of briefly quoting my own words), a paragraph from a short chapter entitled ‘Simple Nature’, where I recalled the music of a song thrush soaring above the din city centre traffic while waiting for a bus:

“…… Simple nature is the tiny chlorophyll fountain of a fern issuing from the mortar of a city harbour wall. Ragwort blooming brightly among the uncompromising substrate of railway track ballast. The different sounds that the wind makes in different trees. It is watching forest deer without them knowing you are there. Noticing the gulls streaming steadily to roost across a reddening autumn sky above a busy street and wondering where their wings have taken them. It is the bird’s song above the roar of traffic and the stillness of the wee small hours……“