A Year in Creatures: April
Interwoven stories from the natural world. Follow the birds and the beasts as they experience the seasons in a rapidly changing landscape.
Skylark (Alauda arvensis)
The sky had been light for some time before its brilliant source crested the hill, and the skylark had been up for some time before that.
He had been drawn out of his scrape by the first greying of the night sky, extinguishing the stars on the eastern horizon. Edging forward, he looked this way and that. Listened. Tested the air for the tang of weasel or stoat. There was just the wind rushing down the slope, ruffling the grass and carrying the mineral scent of high ground. In the valley below, a Robin began to sing.
This was the lark’s first spring and he was fit from a winter’s feeding in wheat fields some miles south. He’d flown there with his nestmates in autumn, following the other birds, and spent the cold months flocked with them, pecking together in the stubble, flitting, chittering, and roosting together. He had felt good, barely aware of himself as one among many. His portion was small and right. But now he felt giant. He was too large, his needs too great, to be found with others. He wanted open sky and open land. A space where he could see all and all there was was him.
His plumage was the blonde colour of the grass, striped with its shadows, and the rising of the season and the sun swelled in his chest almost to bursting. With a quick spring and a trilling chirp, the lark beat his wings and lifted himself into the air.
In a few flickers of the wing he alighted on a boulder. From here, he could see across the whole ridge. He was looking for movement, unchancy shadows and hulking shapes – or for other birds, like himself but smaller, ground-bound and gazing up. Distantly, he heard another lark. He turned (how near?) and in his turn, saw a quick and familiar movement in the grass. A hen?
Flushed with excitement, he leapt into the air, flapping his wings, spreading his tail and opening his throat with an urgent “chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp-pew-pew-pew!”. Angling his bill upward, he ran into the blueing sky, higher and higher. The dawn air filled his lungs and lifted his wings, and he released it in an ardent run of burbles, chirps and trills. He sang high, dropped an octave, experimented with a long burrrrrr. How high could he fly? Where did the range of his song end? Both felt limitless. All was sky, all was music, all was him. When the boulder became a speck and the air felt too heavy, he stopped climbing and just sang. Sang to the hen, sang to the cocks, sang to his own strength and the brightening sky; a mellifluous flow of warbles, chatters and cheeps. While he hovered, he watched the ground, saw his boulder, his mossy pool and the wavering line of a well-trodden track. He sang to it all.
Distantly, in the deer grass near the rock, he saw the flicker of a straw-coloured bird (her?). Without hesitation he stopped fluttering and sailed downwards. The world swept by in a rush of blue and gold. When the boulder became large again, he folded his wings behind his head, pushed his tail upward and plunged, chest forward, towards the ground. Bill down, tail up, he dropped. Plummeting faster and faster and then, in the last moments, just a jump from the ground, opened his wings and parachuted into the grass.
There she was. Smaller than him, but only just, with narrow wings and a bright eye. He recognised her from among the birds in the wheat field and though she had not stood out to him then (few birds had), now she dazzled.
Tentatively, as she cast around pecking up grass seed and tiny insects, he walked towards her. Could this be the bond? The one he would make for this season and all that followed? She turned towards him and on impulse, he stretched upright, crest erect, and hopped up. Jumping without flying, with wings clasped to his back, felt strange and ungainly but he liked the challenge of it and hopped again, higher. The third time, he landed closer to her and at this she took off and fluttered away.
He drooped, pecked at a passing bug, then looked up again. She was still in his territory and, though engrossed in the morning forage, still seemed to be watching. Hope rose in his chest and lifted his crest. He stood up again and, this time staying in the same place, performed three more high hops.
Better! She continued to forage but moved slightly towards him. At this, he turned, bowed his head and with wing tips trembling, lifted his tail. The meaning, to both, was clear. Bent over, he couldn’t see anything but the ground and his own shivering plumage but his hearing was piqued, attuned to her movement.
Some hours later, another male ventured onto the lichen-encrusted rock and the skylark burst from the grass, chattering aggressively. Behind him, the hen crept out of a nest hollow. He fluttered to his perch on the boulder and – filled with an unfamiliar sense of possibility, fragility and joy – leapt, spiralling back into the sky.
What else is happening in the hills?
Lots of birds are at it, doing their best to attract or retain a mate: Lapwings performing acrobatics in the sky; Snipe using their tail feathers to create a weird, low drumming sound; and Curlews mewing over the moor.
Bilberry bumblebees are buzzing around. The Queens emerge from hibernation in April, replenishing themselves on bilberry flowers and starting the search for a good dry nest site. Once found, the Queen will line it with grass, store some pollen and nectar, and lay her first eggs of the year.
Slow worms are sunbathing! You might spot one slithering away from a mossy little sunlit edge and disappearing into the undergrowth.