This Chance of Birds

It is late spring. Each season has something of the previous and the following about it, so early spring feels like winter and late spring feels like the summer. The weather has been warm and sunny for nearly a week, warm enough for linen shorts and no socks! We have been sitting out and watching the sun sailing west and then going down behind the Welsh hills, out in some cases until 9.30 or 10pm, eating out as much as possible. Next year I will be writing a Summer Journal (watch this space) and so I will be starting about now with ideas and early thoughts; a strange notion.

The hedgerows are lined with cow parsley and the thorn hedges have thickened out. Every tree now has leaves and in some cases they look full and summery. The beech tree on the garden lane which leafed from the inside out has now a full covering of leaves, a full head of hair. The apple orchards have blossomed and the neat ordered fields of blossom are everywhere between here and Hereford. Sally's paddock has a young brown foal in it, as well as two lambs. It is a magical, ordinary time.

I borrowed the title from an Edmund Blunden chapter in 'the Face of England', as the birds here have responded dramatically to the weather and longer days. Kites we saw on the way home from Borth, and again near Knucklas. The paddock is full of swallows and house martins who are nesting nearby; we have seen them collecting mud from Michael's fields. The swifts - easily my favourite bird - have come back to Presteigne and Ludlow, great sky-shoals of them high above the rooftops, high above the church last week, their screams audible above the car noises. But they are urban birds and we do not get them here.