OIn this freezing morning we stood still for so long that our feet went numb. We try to be stealthy – a word often used to describe a bird that shakes up dead grass. Eventually, dunnock leaping into view, climbing the swaying stem, intent on reaching the hanging clusters of St. John’s wort. It’s so close we could almost reach out and touch it.
How often have we walked past dunnocks, which so often forage like mice under a hedge, without pausing to appreciate their magnificent plumage? This one has a collar of blue-gray feathers and maroon wings streaked with black, blending perfectly with the dead leaves in the dead of winter. It uses its pointed beak with the precision of fine pincers, but for every seed it grasps, several more cascade to the ground. When he turns his head into the sunlight, his eye turns into a glowing amber ring around the pupil of a polished nozzle.
It is 50 years since we first settled in County Durham and I read the personal diaries. There was so much new to see then. Sometimes we traveled the length and breadth of the district in a single day: the coast in the morning, the fells in the afternoon, the river bank in the evening. It seems we were always on the move. But the most memorable journal entries record chance encounters where we just stood and stared. Hare it he came up to our feet as we leaned over the wall; weasel chase the rabbit across a snowy field and kill it before us; a fawn nibbling wild raspberries on the opposite side of the hedge. The days when we were inconspicuous and blended into the scenery.
So we have a New Year’s resolution: to spend more time standing, watching, in the moment, not traveling somewhere else. To make a virtue perhaps out of necessity, when we don’t have so much energy for long and strenuous walks now.
The Dunnock flaps its wings and slinks back into the undergrowth. Dismissed by some field guides as dull, shy, humble and insignificant, he will be none of those when he delivers his creaky gravel from the tops of the hedges, heralding the end of winter, the prospect of spring.