Page 19 - BBC Wildlife - August 2017 UK

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from an From CHRIS PACKHAM
English DO ANCIENT TREES, DAYDREAMING THROUGH

SUMMER, REMEMBER THIS WOOD’S HOST OF
wood VANISHED SPECIES, I WONDER?

e walk slowly up the from here in the
lane dodging the briar seventies. While
droops, counting the my life was quaked
early bats, waiting for by The Clash those
W a woodcock. And when shyer songsters were
we reach the gate and I look and he sniffs rocking this glade.
over the pinky meadow, there’s an air Both are spent
of self-satisfaction. It’s as if the woods and neither can
feel good about themselves, as if they’ve reform. Their
had a good day, that everything has gone habitats are gone,
perfectly to plan, everything is in place, flats blanket the
everything is happy. site of the Top Rank
It’s not smugness, it’s a gentle smile, Ballroom and years
a dozy relaxed bliss, like when you’ve of overbrowsing by
mown the lawn at the end of a thundery deer have stripped
afternoon, had tea and a slice too many out the tangle
of cake, curled up on a sunlit bed for where those little
a naughty nap and fallen asleep to the cinnamon birds
sound of your softly snoring dog. It’s like hollered into the
knowing the moment is earned because night. I imagine
things have worked out. the ghost of Joe
It’s funny how trees forget. That cluster Strummer at my
of old codgers snoozing through the still side and I lead him
and sweet end of the day seem to have colours, the movements; all those pretty to the dell, his zippy jeans twinkling, his
already forgotten the fluid cascade of the things have disappeared in just a fraction winklepickers slipping on the mud.
willow warbler’s song, the sharp pipe of of these giants’ lifetimes. In fact, there He buttons his biker’s jacket and pulls
the redstart and the ecstatic euphoria of should be no air of cosy pleasure here, on a cigarette, its tip a star in the dim and
the wood warbler. Some should remember nothing is going to plan, everything is not we crouch to listen to their set. He nods
the tickle of red squirrels’ feet across their in place, the woods are not happy at all. approvingly and when the pins and needles
boughs, the nimble grip of the dormouse They are slowly and surely dying. Because get too much we wobble back to the path
and the shadows of purple emperors all the absentees had jobs – all were cogs and he runs his fingers through his hair
dancing over their leaves. in the sylvan machine, all were woven and turns to me and says “Yes… thank you”
If these antiques troubled to look down, harmoniously into the great dynamic that just as a woodcock jerks over. It would have
they should be maudlin over the vanished made this place work; all the tiny deeds been a debt repaid: he and his comrades got
carpets of bluebells, the gaudy flashes of they did beneath that darkening shroud, me out of a jam.
primroses and the clusters of orchids, their lives, their deaths, their heart beats, I sing ‘Garageland’ to Scratchy as we
which twinkled where they let the sky their breaths, made it perfect. wind home, but he can’t hear – he’s deaf
through. And our tree, the big beech, The latch clicks, a mess of gnats fizz in now, too much Clash in his early years. And
the emperor, spread a frame for pine the shadow, a cow clops in the paddock tonight there are no woodcock.
martens to play and red kites to perch, and an impatient tawny owl ‘kwiks’ I let him in and he smells of the night.
for wrynecks to pry. Its and its mate is too He smells of outside, not in. He smells
crooked roots couched SOME SHOULD embarrassed to ‘twoo’, fresh and alive, of everything that is
its four-hundred-and- ` REMEMBER and we wait. It’s almost happening in that other world, cool and
wildcats and polecats,
clean and rainy. I squeeze his tablets into
silent in the thick hazel;
fifty year core is ringed THE SHADOWS OF he sits and we stare sausages and we go to bed. He dreams of
Illustration: Owen Davey/Folio calendar of decay, not in PURPLE EMPERORS and I remember my of a thousand nightingales and that I could
with cells that betray a
hoping for something
squirrels that can’t climb trees, and I dream
DANCING OVER
landlady telling me
its heartwood but in the
have turned Joe Strummer onto birds.
about the nightingales
heart of this wood.
THEIR LEAVES.”
CHRIS PACKHAM is a naturalist and TV presenter.
Because all are
that blasted their
Attend his Tales from the Frontline of Conservation talk
gone, all the notes, the
BBC Wildlife
August 2017 outrageous hoo-ha at Rutland Birdfair: www.birdfair.org.uk 19