& the radiant heat from a thousand crinkly tin farmsheds buckles the only cloud to a sheet heading east. & hawthorn time & the scent that is not innocent. & the moon sharp above fresh oakleaves sending out cool. & the watchful greylag & you watching.

& dusk chorus a reed bunting out in the open cranesbill (?) at yr feet insects & fish either side of lochsurface ripple as raining 1/2

& take the old way home on an errand under indigo sky, vivid green of may's barley beginning to seasurge, starting to beard

& the cloud breaks as you try to follow graphite-on-olive of barn owl passing dusktime canopy

& you surprise the little grebe by accident passing by & they hop off 2 bright & vulnerable eggs. on yr way back those are covered by weed in that low, damp crannog just offshore

& the stormy afternoon, winter hills on the horizon going under canopy - the copper & the green - the white sky is an empty page corvids punctuate briefly

evening a syrupy light, cool & sticky & humid (sun slides down it), the air is opaque (a loud whitethroat seems more distant); at the lochan a greylag warns off & gorse kindles on grey water

a low river with a sandpiper at its middle (an oystercatcher beetles around a shingle bank) - siskins harvest dandelion seeds where pebbles turn to grass, & overhead a blackcap sings from the sun

high & shallow tide, turbid & estuating; reed bunting & stonechat; 1/4

the long gloam. 4°c, the chill of spring. in the lanes 1st hawthorn flowers. tool the tunnelled lanes in low gear. wide evening & vast sky shifts soft light. heavy & localised showers (a horizonal line on tarmac dry to wet; vertical bars on the horizon).

the fractious shifts of light & cloud. time cow parsley emerges. metallic tang to air & threat of thunder. verges wave jack-by-the-hedge in prowling wind. all day sky bruises & heals.

& sunset goldplated & rubbed grey quick - stubs of rainbow - a cuckoo teases & shifts to avoid being mobbed

ancient semi-natural, gasflames of bluebell, woodsorrel lemony on the tongue; blackcap loud & well-concealed in a waking oak; on the fringes, & distantly, a single frame of a cuckoo

at the edge of woods a sedge warbler scratches & freestyles flute, deeper within wild garlic in full flower & scent (red campion & bluebells edge the path) - the wind sidewinds through new, light, canopy; crouch & for 5 minutes watch treecreepers coming & going from a cracked trunk

& abundance of May - growth & light - shining clocks show time of dusk, a buzzard eyes the rookery before being mobbed away 1/2

1st thing, slurp coffee & stretch, lock eyes with a leveret

& evening dulled sun & the local blackbird & thrush have bright sharp voices the edge a tractor churned sludge in march erupts with ground ivy

a heavy sky shot glacier-blue - 3 herons rawrk over & on to the lochan: 7 greylag goslings & 9 mallard ducklings - dusk leans in & contast sharpens: a single swallow chittering #birds

& evening, time of the dandelions' waning clocks, time of goldfinches in the bit you did not cut & landlord cannot see

& at the lochan - some way out - the little grebes are making a mushy mound of weed you assume may be a nest; 2 sedge warblers are playing a scratchy dj set but neither breaks cover; the alder is sending out leaves (a buzzardfeather is somehow tucked into the moss of their trunk)

bimble down the bigriver, grey wagtails feeding a single fledgling & a heron riffling their cloak, orange tip (the red bedrock) 1/3

& down the backroads on errands - speculative early silage on the backroad & lowriver swarming with sandmartins; rain persists & prospect of seeing mayday moonrise diminishes

beltane & rain arrives midafternoon; there is a blackcap ziggzagging in fresh green cover; all the windows of the house are open to the air; your daughter is singing within

& last of april, visit a copper beech - a stunted thing but not young - a kind of metal deerguard merged with it - those ruby leaves emerging, beltane-eve & the moon 1 night from full

& you arrive to greylag bleating code, grey wagtail bobs in a haze of prey & sun strikes water harshly - cows with calves are abroad, the young still shoogly on too-tall legs & you keep a distance - as you leave greylags set sail, parents bracketing a parenthesis of goslings

a treecreeper's nest (accidental find), a broadleaf tunnel, stitchwort & peregrine moon

& our pet rowan begins to flower for the 1st time in their life

& a small rabbit zigging & halting in the rashy field, rusty clefs of bracken unfurling - & an open gate an invitation uphill, Cumbria through a broken wall, the firth invisible

upland, old bracken drenched in song of willow warbler - cuckoo callinging loudly (briefest of barredbreast sighting), audio below - goldfinches & wheatear along the burn, circular sheepstells waiting to disappear in spring growth

& late-April to May (Isle of) - puffins & eider ducks

north east & by evening over to the coast - couple of days off & early start sunday

& the long lucid dusk as temperature aches towards frost a tawny owl begins to whoo tentatively yr neighbour's dog barks twice in warning from a lit back step

& swallow courtship on the farmhouse powerline; withdrawing sun turns gnats to orbs of shoaling light; reed bunting perches resistant to metal thorn; ashbud breaks by moonlight

& everything remains surprising in spring's advance - the great grey beech at the bottom of the lane (rising above a Victorian gate) announces itself copper

& sun is warm on left side of yr face as you climb but in fall this does not last. chill is quick. little grebe & pied wagtail - each in element - arrange feathers. the moon is always to 1 side, surprising in situation

& shy alder; shy beech, violets subtle in the ditch; a late kite, the moon waxing slowly

& somewhere in the gap where clouds pile backround red kites whistle unseen voices carrying in the wind driving hard dark canopy

& the new moon - 2 days old - right in the middle of everything

sandmartin colony, right on the edge of pasture - holes mined into the red land on a sea-eroded soilface - similes of bats, fish, insects as they swarm, but nothing could be more hirundine than those movements in 3 dimensions, the cut of wing & aviator's visor, the zeeping calls, the purpose #birds

centre of the oldest part of the parish - a doorful of sky & death's head chewing nettle, anemone in ancient seminatural, a hive secreted where there is no path

& out front a willow warbler pouring out a descending scale (a hopeful sobbing) & the woods by the village road collude with the burn to soften & shade into cover

& greylags commuting in a scudding sky - wind more february than april - red kite passes high, scanning & scanning below (you send up a sandpiper at the burn, watch it flicker away on small, stiff wings, find an overhung nook to bob back at you)

& in poor light a cormorant patrols lochan's edge with low profile gunboat beligerence - then starts suddenly for a jagged exit over plantation (out of which comes a willow warbler's descending call)

time of cuckooflower - 1st in years it is not by the window, caught instead at temporary traffic lights; nevertheless, time of cuckooflower

& evening shuts up shop early (even the greylags clocked off at 8 & went south to wherever they roost), songbirds stop & a barn owl screams; all neighbours - human & not - decide it is night

& the scented whins & the sunset echoing & the running hare & the martins circling

& a hare's ass - knew they were here, could not prove it

& since yesterday a fall of martins to the loch - rapid & batlike amongst the surface plankton of insects - & in the rank ditch tadpoles continue, remarkably