Birdsong

What were the birds that flew out of the bushes by the hide, during our dawn walk? Starlings? They behaved like starlings, flying off in that great cloud. I've seen one or two starlings on the island, but the birds we really see in numbers are the sparrows. And hear them too - a great din of whistling echoes down the sreet, and I look up and see a ball of brown feathers not as large as my fist: how can something so tiny produce so much noise?

Though the real noise comes from the pigeons on the roof - our room is in the attic, right underneath the cooing, as persistent as if they were drilling through the tiles. Not to mention the morning that one found its way in through the open window, in a great flurry of feathers and curtains (and got out the same way, thank goodness).

And walking home from the dunes on my last evening, a flock of pigeons wheeling in formation over the fields: anyone who thinks that sheep move en masse hasn't watched pigeons.

That same evening, there were four lapwings patrolling one particularly marshy field between the road and the dunes, shouting like affronted cats. There was no sign of them as I approached along the lane, but as soon as I was on their territory they took turns to keep an eye on me, swooping back and forth until I reached the field boundary and the drier, sandier terrain.

Lots of swallows, too, this year, zipping along the lanes, low and fast and apparently not bothered by people.