May Day dawn chorus jaunt

2 May is International Dawn Chorus Day, but three of us decided to steal a march by rising at 3.30am on the First and meeting at 4.50 by the Waterman's Arms Pub on the Thmes embankment at Barnes to progress to the fabulous Leg o' Mutton wetlands/nature reserve, open 24 hours.

Getting up to greet the dawn is a rare occurrence for me, but I'll never forget the previous occasions when I did so - for the Aldeburgh Festival's Messiaen bird day, with Pierre Laurent Aimard playing the Catalogue d'Oiseaux over four concerts in different locations from dawn to midnight, and for the Göttingen International Handel Festival's sunrise concert, a ghostly (because so quiet) clavichord recital in a room overlooking a lake.

I remember walking through the streets of Göttingen in the dark, the silence occasionally punctuated by a blackbird song. It was much the same when I got on my bike two Saturdays ago. The moon was still bright above the central gardens of home (if not quite in focus here - remember, it was 4am and I wasn't quite sharp myself), 

blackbirds and robins were up and about at any green spot I passed, and three foxes crossed various roads in front of me. At my favourite spot on the Thames, the eyot, there was the sleeping swan by the reflected patch of moonlight

who on my cycle back from Kew Gardens the previous afternoon, when I was detained by high tide at the same place, had come up to me and hung around while I waited for the waters to recede.

I'd collected Cally from her house in Chiswick, so she's pedalling along in front here

First signs of reddy-pink sky above the trees on the opposite side of the river

 and became more apparent as we took our bikes up and over the Barnes foot- and rail-bridge, moon on one side,

and pre-sunrise on the other.

We met friend Freddie as planned outside the Waterman's Arms, then walked with the already loud music of song and mistle thrushes to our right to the Leg o' Mutton. I wish the short films I made reproduced anything like the variety of sounds we heard; I won't put any of them up because, though a persistent wren is very entertaining close by, you can't hear the warblers among the reeds in the distance. Sedge and Reed Warblers' songs are unfamiliar to me, but I was happy to have it confirmed by Freddie that the four piercing short notes and a long I kept hearing around the Wetlands Centre were those of the Cetti's Warbler, now happily on the increase. We went down to the shore to get closer to them

and found a mallard of indeterminate colourings with four chicks waddling through the mud into the water.

A fox sat nonchalantly by a bench ahead of us and only ambled off when we got closer, while a Great Spotted Woodpecker was heard and then seen to our right. My shot isn't as focused as the ones from the Margravine and Old Brompton cemeteries, but it's ocular proof. 

The scene itself was perfectly beautiful, with the sounds an enrichment.

Then the first rays of the sun hit tree branches at the east end of the lake (time: 5.50am)

 and it rose as we rounded to the quieter, river side of the reserve.

The moon was still visible through light cloud opposite

and after further birdgazing

we decided to sit on a favourite bench, drink our coffee and eat our bananas. The sun's warming powers were remarkable and the inhabitants kept delivering. A Greenfinch flitted above, Long-tailed Tits below and on the stump behind a Chiffchaff sang. 

Freddie regaled us with an account of its extraordinary journey from the Sahel, where it overwinters. You might like a still of it too, turning demurely away.

Our twitcher, or birder, was especially excited to spot a Stock Dove some way ahead on the path. A more usual but nevertheless beautiful sight and sound was a swan swift-landing. This is merely a glide shot, background to young beech leaves.

The light was getting stronger on trees, reeds and water,

with a heron flying in and out

and opposite where we started, Reed Warblers were especially lively in three different spots. I even got a blurry shot of one, not easy as they're in constant flit.

At the exit, we took a look at the board of sightings over the past month 

and found they tallied pretty much with what Freddie reckoned. This is his record, covering everything.

Mallard

Tufted Duck

Pochard

Shoveler

'Manky' Mallard (parentage questionable...)

Canada Goose

Egyptian Goose

Greylag

Coot

Moorhen

Mute Swan

Black-headed Gull

Herring Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Dunnock (heard, not seen, but our regular back yard visitor is back)

 

 

Wren

Robin 

Carrion Crow

Jackdaw

Magpie

Blue Tit

Great Tit

Long-tailed Tit

Goldfinch (also seen in the back yard, but the Niger seeds I've put out have not been touched)

Greenfinch

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Feral Pigeon

Wood Pigeon

Stock Dove

Starling

Blackbird

Mistle Thrush

Song Thrush (heard but not seen) 

Sedge Warbler (heard but not seen)

Cetti's Warbler (heard and seen - albeit briefly)

Reed warbler

Chiffchaff

Blackcap 

Freddie was especially chuffed because just as we were walking along the Thames embankment towards Barnes, a Common Sandpiper took off. Amazingly, we'd been at the reserve for four hours, so there would be breakfast options - happy to take the one at Gail's, where the croissants were still warm, and we sat on a bench by the pond as the bric-a-brac Saturday market was unloading. Nothing much to see there, but I was delighted with two purchases at the farmers' market over the road - an exquisite assortment of tomatoes from the Isle of Wight (hurrah for The Tomato Stall), and thyme-and-fir honey from a Cretan seller. One final note as we were leaving the pond: a seagull swooped and grabbed a duckling. That's nature for you.

Solstitial sunrises from a Palma balcony

We lucked out, as they say, with this view from an apartment recommended by our friend Sophie Sarin (currently in tougher climes back in Mali) via her Swedish diplomat friend from Bamako, Eva. It was enough at first to wake when the sun was already bright

and the coast opposite clear

but after an early lifting of the shutters to reveal a sunrise, 7.30am rising became a must. Praise be to the solstice for making such a daily revelation possible - sunrises are usually for me a rare and unforgettable occurrence, like getting up at 4.30am in Göttingen to head out for a clavichord recital by the Seeburger See with the sun beyond the windows rising through the willows. Given variable weather, with only a smattering of rain when Storm Elsa was supposed to be at her height (it was about 9pm and I was on the way back from a free recital of Fauré's piano music in the fabulous Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró (more on which in a future post), no one morning was quite the same as the other. Even on a day when a Mallorcan version of the haar hung low, there was a hint of blurry sun before it closed in,

 There was red sky in the morning on the day of the Elsa warning

after which the sunny weather returned for the solstice days: first heralded by a different kind of red, a rosy-fingered dawn

then as an orb rising from haze

while the next day, Helios made a simple ascent at its most majestic.

The fishing boat on the left seemed to account for the gulls circling before the levee

while I was more hard-pressed to account for the swarms above the terraces of olive trees in Deia; some of them look like skuas, others black-headed gulls.

In our own garden - well-kept, but they need to ditch the noisy, smelly leaf-blowers - the denizens were mainly blackbirds, collared doves and the very occasional butterfly (I think this is a Wall Brown, Lassiomata megera, but someone else may know different).

while down on the rocky seafront, cormorants dried their wings,

poised and skimmed. We could just have been idle, but there was too much to see in the mountains and the wonderful city on our doorstep, where one of the greatest cathedrals in the world had its sandstone facade further deepened by the sun setting opposite.

More on that wonder, on Chopin and George Sand in Valldemossa and Robert Graves in Deia, in future posts. It's nice to be back for quiet interstitial days, full of such vivid impressions and having gleaned such warmth, as well as respite from the sight of our Prime Monster, over 10 days.

The frogs of Göttingen - and Seeburger See

Anyone who's hung around this blog for a long time may remember my account of first acquaintance with the more unexpected choruses of the Göttingen International Handel Festival, when I fell in love with the symphony of brekekekexes in the University of Göttingen's magical Botanical Gardens. On two subsequent visits, their stridency was rather muted - last year's epiphany with a mallard and his drake made amends - but not this past week. It meant a fair bit of hanging around, though, until I finally saw the above fella on one of the lilypads and, in following his progress, got the full sonic works. There's a lot of jumping, but blink and you'll miss the bubble-gum inflating to make the noise early on.

As I explained in last year's blog, the time of the Festival depends on where in the calendar the Germans' Ascension Day holiday falls. This time we were back to the end of May, when the aquilegias are flourishing

and providing a major source of nectar for the bees.

I actually got a double dose of ranine activity on the first full day of my visit to the Festival this year. Not ideal, sleepwise, since I'd got up at 5.30am on Wednesday morning for an early flight and had to do so at 3.30am on Thursday for the GIHF's second 'sunrise concert'. Still, it had to be done: my all-day Messiaenic birdsong experience at Aldeburgh last year taught me that. So after a stunning performance of  a work which came as a revelation to me, Handel's early (and pre-Bach St Matthew and John) Brockes-Passion on Wednesday evening, I decided it made sense to skip Continuum's late-night event and get something approaching four hours' sleep (by the way, all the events I did attend I'll be writing up on The Arts Desk next weekend).

As at Aldeburgh, the dawn chorus was one attraction. It seemed to be starting up in the tree-lined streets of Göttingen as I walked through the near-darkness at 4am to get the coach to our destination. But on arrival at the Seeburger See 45 minutes later, with the red glow of pre-sunrise across the lake,

the full thing was definitely in full spate. You may not see much of what I could, as  I walked through the woods near the lakeside in this short film, but you'll hear what you need to. Of course, our ranine friends soon come into earshot by a small pond.

Then I joined the few other concertgoers who hadn't gone straight into the warm on arrival

seeing this to the left

and some old boathouses to the right.

The one-hour concert began at 5am on the first floor of the Restaurant Graf Isang (est. 1925), with candles lighting our way upstairs and strategically placed in front of the surprise instrument - a clavichord, no less, the first time I've ever heard one live in concert.

Although the actual programme is the territory of my Arts Desk piece, we must just see young Avinoam Shalev, one of the already more than promising prizewinners in which the GIHF has placed justified faith. Israeli by birth, Hanover trained and now living in The Hague, he led us into a mesmerising meditation on the sounds and colours possible within the quieter end of the dynamic range the instrument inhabits. The sun actually rose behind the willows to our left at about 5.25am, as he was in to the first movement of Haydn's G minor Sonata Hob. XVI: 44. I took this picture, of course, in a break between movements, not during, as no official photographer was present.

A bow to a wildly enthusiastic if necessarily small and select audience: note the bird of prey in the first complete window pane on the left behind our clavichordist.

The sun went behind early morning clouds - by 9am a clear blue sky would emerge - but that didn't deter me from taking my breakfast out on to the terrace.

This turned out to be a good idea, or maybe it was just a case of attracting kindred spirits, because first our coach driver, a very interesting and friendly guy called Jan who'd stood for the whole recital, asked if he could join me. Then Avinoam appeared (pictured left), followed by our chaperone Enno (who said he had to stay out of this picture so as not to block the lake view) and Lisa Kraemer from the GIHF Artists' Office.

So we had a happy time - and there was plenty of it, the coach not due to leave until an hour and a half after the concert - mainly fulminating about Brexit and Trump (the legs you may see in the background belong to a bizarre dummy who had an unfortunate resemblance to the latter). This wasn't the only occasion at Göttingen this year where I have cause to invoke the suitable observation of Kurt Vonnegut's uncle on blessed gatherings in lovely places, 'if this isn't nice, what is?'

In fact that was also true of a last meeting yesterday (Sunday) morning at our favourite haunt in Göttingen, the Cafe Botanik. Pictured here, our wonderful co-ordinator, now a friend, Victoria Viebahn, critic Luca and his friend Christian.

You may also have read on this blog before about the Botanik, still run by an Iranian whose menu is small but perfect. On a hot afternoon I had a refreshing glass of sharbat as well as a hummus plate, and yesterday saffron cake was the only option in the absence of croissants - but delicious.

Inevitably, with less than an hour to go before my train back to Hanover Airport, I had to make a last homage to the frogs, taking Victoria with me, and the inhabitants of the noisiest pond were still to be found.

Their neighbours several blocks to the south set up quite a racket, too, and this time the birds were obliging, both aurally and visually.

So I said this farewell to another inhabitant,

found another bee nectar-sipping, this time in a peony

and noted various positive signs of Germany today - funny, isn't it, how its chancellor is now officially the Leader of the Free World - including this sign in the rather deracinated part of the garden (it's now in need of more finances, and too dependent on volunteers)

and these papers and magazines on a rack inside the Cafe Botanik, snapshotting Obama's meeting with Merkel in Berlin as well as Macron, 'dear friend'*,

 and made my way back to the station via the lovely town museum, currently housing a neat little exhibition on Lutheranism arriving in Göttingen (relatively late, in 1529, with predictably disastrous consequences). Maybe more on that in a future entry, but the ensemble is irresistible.

*It actually turns out to need taking in its other meaning of 'expensive', as two folk have pointed out to me; the subheading is how Macron will cost Germany. But the leader actually ends with the conclusion that togetherness for European countries is the only way ahead.