Goshawk Summer E-Book

James Aldred

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 385

Beschreibung

WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2022James Aldred's prize-winning lockdown diary of his summer in the New Forest, featuring a stunning new linocut cover by illustrator Nick Hayes.'A beautiful inspirational tale set in an extraordinary time.' Ray Mears'Wonderful … they don't come much more expert than James Aldred' Lauren LaverneWhat happens to nature when we are no longer there?In early 2020, wildlife cameraman James Aldred was commissioned to film the lives of a family of goshawks in the New Forest. Then lockdown. No more cars, no more aeroplanes, no one in the woods – except James – in a place empty of people but filled with birdsong and new life.In these silver nights and golden days, there were tumbling fox cubs, calling curlew and, of course, the soaring goshawks – shining like fire through one of our darkest times. A goshawk summer unlike any other; an extraordinary season in the forest.'Magical and transporting… a beautiful and deeply evocative hymn to love, hope and connection.' HELEN MACDONALD, author ofH is for Hawk'[An] entrancing, acutely observed, beautifully paced diary of the secretive raptor's breeding season… Fascinating.'BBC Wildlife

Leseprobe

In loving memory of my father, Chris.

Sit Still, Look Long and Hold Yourself Quiet Arthur Cadman, Dawn Dusk and Deer

New Forest, England

Spring 2020

A LOUD CALL SHATTERS THE PEACE. NOT THE B LUNT mewing of a buzzard, but the piercing cry of something infinitely more predatory: a wild goshawk. It echoes through the woods around me. Strident, commanding, forceful. A regal sound for a regal bird.

I can’t see her but know she’s flying towards me through the trees. She’s coming in fast and there’s only seconds before she explodes into frame.

I roll camera just in time to catch her landing on the nest. Powerful legs held out in front; a squirrel’s limp body clenched in her yellow fist. The chicks clamour for food and a heartbeat later they’re rewarded with morsels of flesh plucked from the warm carcass.

The goshawk. Steel grey, the colour of chainmail. Sharp as a sword. A medieval bird for a medieval forest. A timeless scene. The wood holds its breath, the only sound the begging of the chicks and the gentle breeze sieving through trees. The forest hasn’t been this peaceful for a thousand years.

I grew up here. Made friends, climbed trees, slept rough on the heath and camped in the woods, but I’ve never known it like this. There isn’t another soul around and while Covid grips the outside world, the New Forest blossoms in a spring like no other. Nature’s been given the space to unfurl her wings and they are shimmering.

*

There are many terrible things to remember about the spring and summer of 2020, but I was one of the lucky ones. With permission to film in the New Forest, lockdown gave me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe the wildlife of a unique place in a unique moment never to be repeated.

This is a tale of reawakened passions for a familiar childhood landscape now struggling to cope with the pressures of the modern world. A portrait in time, as seen through the eyes of the wild creatures relying on it for their survival.

Above all, it’s the story of how one family of goshawks living in a timeless corner of England shone like fire through one of our darkest times and how, for me, they became a symbol of hope for the future.

Monday 6 April

A familiar, welcome sound makes me look up from my phone. The first two swallows of the year have just this moment arrived home from South Africa. Dishevelled and visibly exhausted from their long migration, they perch on the telegraph wire across the road from our front garden. Long sceptre wings half-raised as they diligently preen, running breast feathers through beaks while chatting to each other in a constant bubble of liquid conversation. There’s a buoyant urgency to their talk: like a couple of long-haul pilots relieved to have made a safe landing after an arduous flight. They are perched directly above our neighbour’s farmhouse, a seventeenth-century collection of tiled roofs and sturdy stone walls moulded from the fertile Somerset earth upon which it stands. I wonder how many generations of swallows their barns and outbuildings have provided refuge for over the centuries. Thousands, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s almost certain these latest two voyagers were hatched and raised here.

I’ve not been home long myself. A fortnight ago I was filming the daily fortunes of a family of cheetah in East Africa. Four young cubs and an impressively stoic mother whose job it was to keep her boisterous offspring hidden and safe from the murderous attention of lions, while hunting daily to provide them with meat. Meat that still pulsed as it was devoured in the long grass beneath the bushes. Young impala were a speciality of hers. I’d filmed her using the movement of wind on the grass as cover before accelerating into a blur. Stretching out into a searing streak of intent that ended in a cloud of dust, a throng of thrashing hooves, and a cameraman with a heart rate of 140 beats per minute.

Returning to the kill the following morning, we’d disturbed a warthog and a couple of vultures. In the twelve hours of darkness since we were last there, the carcass had been stripped. Picked clean; an empty cage of bones exposed to the red sky above. The impala’s gaping skull was still attached to a spine bent double; neck broken. Sinews clung to bony crevices and a swarm of fat black flies rose to greet us. Then something truly unforgettable happened. Without warning, the air around us was filled with the joyous swooping and chattering of European swallows. Buffeting their way north across the equator, they’d been drawn down to the feast of flies. They wouldn’t stay long, but for a few glorious hours they swirled in the wake of our land cruiser as we lurched slowly through the long grass looking for our cheetahs.

I would love to think that these same birds would soon be arriving back in the spring pastures of Somerset, but they were more likely following the Great Rift Valley and Nile up into Eastern Europe. Perhaps making their way to an old barn in the forests of eastern Poland or Belarus.

I continue scrolling through the morning headlines. The prime minister’s been in hospital for ten days. The police have no PPE to keep them safe on the streets during lockdown, and reports of domestic abuse are increasing. There’s not much good news around at the moment and yet it takes a conscious effort to pull myself away from the bulletins.

Across the other side of the valley, a solitary HGV heads south on the M5, but otherwise the motorway’s deserted, as is the normally busy road running through our village. The air is still. A goldfinch serenades the sky from the top of our apple tree and dunnocks squabble in the lilac. The blue sky is clear, not an aeroplane to be seen or heard. All is peaceful and serene.

The spell is broken by the incongruous sound of someone singing ‘All You Need is Love’ at the top of his voice. He’s cycling slowly up through the village towards our house and I can’t resist peeking through the hedge. An elderly man in overalls is weaving in and out of the dotted white lines like a kid, clearly enjoying himself in the absence of any other traffic.

The perfect antidote to this morning’s depressing news. The swallows look on with avian indifference.

I’d returned from Kenya on 15 March. My last day with the cheetahs had finished with the family silhouetted against a smouldering sunset. The mother sitting upright, scanning the western horizon with her painted eyes while the cubs rolled and pounced on each other in the grass at her feet.

The night flight out of Nairobi had been rammed with foreign nationals trying to get home ahead of the chaos about to hit. A TV in the departure lounge was blaring out its rolling-news update from CNN. It soon became clear the presenters didn’t know what the story was. Something bad was on its way, but no one seemed to understand exactly what. I certainly didn’t. I’d had my head in the sand and was now struggling to re-engage with a world that seemed just as confused, panic-stricken and helpless as the young gazelle I’d seen gripped by the throat the day before. Boarding the plane, I passed a sobering and divisive poster tacked to the wall: ‘The New China Virus. What do we know about it?’ Dangerously little, it seemed.

I glance up. The swallows have gone, but later I see them swooping low over the meadow next to us, indulging in some serious in-flight refuelling. They’ve only been back a few hours, but already they look better. Round here they’re known as bluebirds, and the sun shimmers on their cobalt wings as they do what they do best, raising the spirits of anyone taking the time to watch. The bluebirds are back, and everything is going to be all right – I hope.

Friday 10 April

The country’s been in lockdown for two weeks. I take our three boys into the empty landscape of the valley opposite for some decompression. They’ve been bouncing off the walls at home and it’s good to feel the stride of open ground. They bring their bows to shoot arrows high into the sky above the wide rhyne-locked levels. It’s a good way to let off steam for an hour or so. Crossing one of the many small bridges, I glance down to see the five-toed pads of a large dog otter imprinted in the soft mud. A quick peer over the other side of the bridge shows an inky black smear of spraint on stone. I dab in the tip of my hazel walking stick then offer it up for the lads to smell: pungent ammonia with a tinge of weed and fish. They wrinkle their faces and ask why I’m so excited. ‘It’s just poo, Dad.’ I struggle to give them a satisfactory explanation. Homeschooling at its best.

It becomes clear that it’s not just us decompressing out here. Nature is also filling her lungs, expanding into the newly reclaimed space of an empty English countryside. We disturb several roe deer and catch the whirling red propeller of a fox’s tail as it sprints into a thicket of willow. We encounter a stoat bounding down the track towards us, then stop for a while to tune in to the electric buzz and interference of a sedge warbler. Just like the swallows, these tiny birds have spent the last few weeks flitting their way back north over the sands of the Sahara.

The reed beds are now alive with their song as they seek to establish breeding territories. Me: ‘They spend the winter in Africa, lads.’ Tarun, our nine-year-old, muttering as he walks past: ‘Bet they wish they’d stayed there.’

The boys have just discovered a large clutch of ten pheasant eggs in the leaf litter below a holly bush when my phone rings. It’s Andy Page, head keeper of the New Forest. Corralling the lads away so that the perfectly camouflaged hen can get back to business, I answer the call.

‘James, bad news I’m afraid. That gos nest isn’t sitting. I’ve just been over to check and there’s no sign of her.’

As one of the forest’s top natural predators, goshawks have been chosen as major characters for our film. Being rare, legally protected and notoriously elusive, these ‘phantoms of the forest’ can be a real challenge. Much to my relief, a month or so ago Andy had offered to show me an old nesting site as a potential location for filming. There’s not a lot he doesn’t know about these legendary raptors and the site he had in mind was perfect. A discreet territory, shadow-locked deep inside a large block of mixed conifer. So, two days after I’d arrived back from Africa and a week before lockdown began, I’d driven south from Somerset to meet him at his cottage on the edge of the New Forest. We sat in his dining room, discussing plans over a cuppa while an ancient stuffed curlew eyeballed us from within a glass case in the corner of the room.

Andy carries his formidable knowledge lightly. A devout birder, he is also the Head of Wildlife Management for Forestry England South, which means it’s his job to know what is breeding where and when in the forest. It’s also his job to manage the forest in a way that balances the needs of its visitors and residents with those of the wildlife that calls it home.

Siskins were flitting around the garden feeders as we left his cottage to drive out into the forest, yellow dust filling the air as we crossed the stream where as a teenager I walked our dog. This is a landscape of intense memory for me. I left the forest many years ago, our family home dissolving in the wake of my parents’ divorce. My sister started a new life in Australia, while I headed to Bristol. To this day, part of my heart remains in the forest, dwelling in the quiet rides and woods of my childhood. Even the smell of the place stirs deep currents of longing within me.

Andy drove with the confidence of someone who knows the exact location of every axle-breaking pothole. Vehicle access to the forest is restricted via gates that function like a series of airlocks leading deeper and deeper into the woods. Having stopped his truck to unlock the first, he led me through the trees to a second, before recrossing the stream next to the old oak beneath which my wife and I spent a lazy summer’s day as teenagers.

Entering the next enclosure, we moved up through a large block of forest to emerge onto open heath, where a dishevelled man in hoodie and jeans was stumbling through the young pines next to a secluded car park. Apparently searching the ground for something, he visibly blanched at the sight of an official 4×4 and as Andy walked past my open window to relock the gate, he whispered, ‘There’s a lot of strange behaviour goes on in these car parks, James.’

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing on the edge of a quiet forest track in the heart of a remote stand of conifers. Goldcrests called unseen from above as I quietly followed Andy uphill through tall, straight trunks of mature Douglas firs. The occasional larch was among them, but their delicate needles were not yet showing, so they looked almost dead in comparison with the evergreens above. There was an eerie silence in that wood. The mossy ground soaked up light and sound like a sponge and no birds were singing. The air was cool, chilly even, and above our heads the wind breathed through the foliage in hushed whispers. The place felt empty, deserted, yet pensive. As if something was watching.

Picking my way forward between fallen branches, I began to notice wood-pigeon feathers and splashes of chalky-white raptor dung. The mutes seemed fresh, but other bird sign was sparse, no more than a thin veneer of ephemeral hints and clues. I wondered how Andy could be so certain we were standing in the heart of a goshawk territory.

In answer to my thoughts, the brooding silence was broken by a strident kek-kek-kek that dispelled all doubt. Being mid-March, it was still too early in the season for birds to be on eggs, but it was a clear message: a pair of goshawks had staked a claim to the wood; they had seen us and they didn’t much care for the intrusion. As the calls trailed off into the distance, we continued on, up through the trees.

Nearing the top of the slope, Andy paused, raising his binoculars to look at a large bundle of sticks high in a bare, skeletal larch.

It always amazes me how prominent goshawk nests are when you finally find them, but then goshawks are the ultimate paradox: secretive yet bold; skulking yet brazen. Shrouded in shadow, they have an inner fire that burns white hot. An uncompromising, relentless hunter of great intelligence and stamina, there is also something unhinged about them. A psychopath’s charisma that draws you in close one minute only to make you flinch and recoil the next.

Andy nodded approvingly – the nest looked well tended and freshly repaired after winter – and told me there were several other nests in the wood, pretty standard for goshawks. After muscling in on a new patch, they often take over the old nests of other raptors such as buzzards. At other times they build their own, but either way they generally have three or four from which to choose. With a pathological fear of being seen, goshawks frequently nest within the comforting gloom of tall conifers. Douglas firs are a favourite, though occasionally they also go for the open canopies of European larch. When they do, the larch is almost always growing close to dense evergreens that help shield the goshawks’ mysterious ways from prying eyes.

I often wonder whether their choice of tree is influenced by what they were raised in as chicks. Or whether it is simply ingrained in the DNA of birds whose ancestors haunted the boreal forests long ago. Whatever the reason, I was relieved that this pair had chosen larch. Even in full leaf these deciduous conifers remain exposed and airy – all the better for filming the nest from an adjacent tree.

Raising my own binoculars, I saw daylight through a lattice of lacy twigs woven around the nest’s rim. There was no sign of a bird within, but that was to be expected, since it was still technically winter. Still, spring was fast approaching – one of the reasons we’d chosen to crack on so soon after I’d returned from Kenya. As with most things in nature, timing was critical and any preparation of the site for filming had to be done as soon as the birds had chosen a nest, but before they’d laid eggs. A very narrow window of opportunity.

The larch’s bark was a warm chestnut colour, but cold to the touch. Starting with my back to it, I scrutinised every neighbouring tree for possible vantage points from which to set up my camera. Both Andy and I gravitated towards a couple of prominent Douglas firs standing twenty metres away uphill.

Foresters had recently thinned out the wood, leaving the ground littered with offcuts and discarded branches, but this had also opened up flight paths and corridors for the birds. Goshawks love to fly low and fast, skimming the terrain with their powerful chests, before pulling back into steep climbs at the last possible moment – appearing on the nest with no warning. I’m sure this is a conscious effort to keep a low profile, their steep ascents mirroring the vertical tree trunks around them. In any case, the open understorey of the wood was a gift for me also and with a good view of anything going on below me, I’d have a few seconds’ warning of their approach.

Joining Andy at the base of the two tall firs, I could see that they loomed over the shorter larch downhill. They should offer a decent view of the nest, but the only way to be totally sure would be to climb them.

Andy pulled on his climbing harness; I stepped into mine, the intrusive clink of carabiners muffled by moss and leaf litter. The firs lacked strong branches low down so the best way to get up them quickly would be to use spurs, as if scaling a telegraph pole. I strapped my climbing spikes to my boots and removed the protective wine corks from their savage steel points. Having passed my safety line around the back of the trunk, I gently placed a razor-sharp point against the thick bark. Stepping up, I felt the blade slide slowly into the cambium as my weight was transferred onto the stiletto. My left foot followed suit and I began to climb, sliding my loop of rope up the back of the tree as I went. The snap of small branches told me Andy was also off the ground, heading up the fir closest to the nest. The citrus scent of conifer resin filled the air as steel punctured sapwood.

At fifty feet up I was level with the nest, with a clear view down into the cup-like bowl in the centre of its twiggy platform. A nest within a nest, this cup had been carefully lined with fresh green sprigs of fir, a soft cradle awaiting the arrival of a clutch of eggs in a couple of weeks’ time. Andy had monitored enough gos nests to know what needed doing for the camera so made short work of any intervening snags and branches, but the exposed view also revealed an awkward branch within the larch itself. Reaching out towards me like a long claw, it obscured the nest and needed to come out. So, leaving a discreet guide rope behind for next time, I abseiled down, gently pushing the ruptured spike wounds back into the bark as I passed. The sub-cambium was flashing pink and I was worried the marks might draw attention to the site. Spring sap would soon be rising and by pressing the soft bark back into the wounds, the gashes would quickly heal.

Climbing a nest tree always feels wrong to me. As if I’m trespassing on sacred ground, which of course I am. Not that it bothers the birds so early in the season, when there is little to tie them to a tree save the time they’ve invested in repairing the winter-worn nest. This changes once they’ve laid eggs, of course, but I still felt like an imposter stepping up onto a stage, the surrounding wood a hushed auditorium of watching eyes. Half expecting to be caught red-handed by a returning hawk, I made the climb as quickly as possible, neatly sawing through the long branch at its base. I couldn’t resist a quick peek into the nest. Not only had they built in a larch, but aside from the soft cushion of Douglas fir twigs in its centre, they’d also chosen larch for its construction. Large dead branches on the bottom, thinner ones on top, with long whippy twigs woven around the parapet. Larch branches are covered in knobs that interlock, providing rigidity and strength. Such nests are less likely to blow out during winter storms, so they get bigger and bigger each year as new material is added.

Standing on a horizontal limb to the side of the nest, I looked out into the surrounding wood for a goshawk’s-eye view. This was the vista the female would have for at least a month as she sat tight on her eggs. From up here the wood became a three-dimensional landscape of dense foliage and distant glimpses. The understorey below was an open colonnade of vertical trunks, but level with the nest the branches closed in and I saw corridors of approach that remained invisible from the ground. A labyrinth of shifting parallax. For a predatory bird able to curl, tuck and swerve through the smallest of gaps, that discreet canopy world would be paradise.

The grey-brown columns of fir trunks led my eye back to the ground where Andy was already down and shouldering his harness. The creeping paranoia of being watched by the resident hawks brought me back to myself, and I descended as quickly and quietly as I could.

The plan for my next visit would be to rig the filming platform and hide. Leaving the wood, I glanced back at the tree. The stage seemed set.

Fast-forward three weeks and it seems now that our filming plans may come to nothing. Andy’s voice sounds almost apologetic down the line: ‘I’ve just been over to check and there’s no sign of her, James. Probably best if we spend a day trying to find you an alternative. When can you get back down?’

There is no denying that spring is gathering pace. Blossom clouds the pear trees and while winter still clings to the bare branches of oaks, the birches are already in full leaf and the reed beds sway in sunlight that’s so much warmer than it was just a few days ago. The goshawks won’t wait for us. Two weeks into lockdown, I am still waiting for my official permission to travel and until I receive a letter of authority from Forestry England, I can’t go anywhere; nor do I want to.

Thursday 16 April

The low morning sun sets fire to the mist in our valley as I pull onto the deserted road through the village. My official permissions to work, including the all-important licence to film goshawks, came through yesterday, so I’m heading back down to the forest again to meet with Andy. This might be our last chance to find a viable nest before eggs are laid and the goshawk breeding season starts in earnest. The local ravens are already up, rowing across the sky to my right, and I pass our resident buzzard perched like a security camera on her telegraph pole at the T-junction. Even as a silhouette she’s instantly recognisable: a massive chocolate-brown bird with a pale crescent moon on her breast. The valley’s full of her kind; around twenty pairs. This female and her mate have spent late winter stooping and soaring over the ridge behind us. It won’t be long until they’re back on their nest, a huge ivy-tangled affair in the crook of an oak in the centre of the local wood.

The M5 northbound is utterly empty. The idea of an empty motorway should be appealing, but it isn’t. It’s foreboding and unsettling. I’m glad to join the smaller roads winding south towards Warminster. I begin to relax a little; to slow down and enjoy the contours of the valley. I’ve travelled this route hundreds of times, in every vehicle I’ve ever owned and at all times of the day and night. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the cab of my dad’s Luton van as we drove up from Dorset to sell furniture in Bristol. This is the heart of Wessex, the green country rolling past like a timeline of English history. I’ve never seen it like this. The landscape shines, but there’s no one else here to enjoy it. I alternate between feelings of wonder and uneasiness.

Coming down into the Wylye valley, I come face to face with a muntjac deer. It’s standing in the middle of the empty A36, its hog-like back and tucked-in legs making it instantly recognisable as it browses on sprigs of wind-blown leaves strewn across the tarmac. I slow to a crawl and stop 20 feet away in the deserted road. I turn off the engine and watch in silence. He carries on regardless, seemingly unaware that he is dining on what would normally be one of the busiest A-roads in the country. A few minutes later, having crumpled the last of the young tender shoots into his mouth, he saunters back into thick roadside cover, as if making a point of moving on because he’s finished, not because I’ve interrupted him. I’ve got a lot of time for muntjac, having encountered them often enough in their native rainforests of South East Asia. Love them or loathe them, these descendants from deer-park escapees are here to stay in the British countryside and as I continue on my way, I can’t help thinking that some of our issues with their presence here might be because they’ve not asked permission to take the opportunities we ourselves have offered. For me, this is one of nature’s most endearing traits: when all’s said and done, it owes us nothing.

A glimpse of Salisbury Cathedral tells me I’m approaching the northern borders of the New Forest. Still dominating the medieval city eight centuries on, it’s the perfect consummation of timber and stone. I helped with its restoration once. Climbing past medieval carpenter marks, I’d ascended the iron-like oak scaffolding inside the spire to squeeze out of a small hatch 400 feet above ground. The city below had looked like a model village. Hanging on a rope, I’d chatted to lonely gargoyles while replacing crumbling masonry with crisp new blocks hoisted up from far below. Some of the gargoyles were handsome, albeit in a demonic sort of way. Others were nothing more than a pair of dissolved eyes. But all had been up there, muttering away for centuries. One thing was for sure: they’d borne witness to more than one epidemic in their time. Cold comfort.

Arriving at Andy’s house, we keep an unnatural distance from each other, now known the world over as ‘social distancing’, and drive into the forest in convoy.

Heading up onto the open heathland, we drive past the valley where I once found all six species of native reptile on the same morning. Past the ridge where the wild gladioli grow and round the corner where I’d once disturbed a local trying to cram a freshly killed fallow buck into the back of his hatchback. Frozen in the light of my headlights, he’d had a hand on each of the deer’s huge velvet-covered antlers as he tried to wrestle it into the boot. I was just relieved not to have stumbled upon something even more sinister. We stared at each other for a few awkward seconds before he simply shrugged, smiled ruefully and carried on. I’d left him to it, although I couldn’t help thinking he’d need something bigger than a Datsun Cherry if he was going to make a habit of nicking dead deer.

I continue to follow Andy’s 4×4 down memory lane and soon find myself driving through the tourist-courting village of Burley, with its slightly Gothic, Brothers Grimm facades looming empty and silent – a film set awaiting the cry of action. The local donkeys are clearly enjoying lockdown, presiding over the high street in the morning sunshine.

Back up onto the open heath and ten minutes later Andy pulls over next to a thicket of conifers. The day’s nest-hunting has begun and this is the first of the alternative goshawk filming locations he’s offered to show me: a huge bulky affair teetering in the top of a small scrappy tree surprisingly close to the road. Not the most picturesque location, and not for the first time that day I regret the fact that our original choice is no longer viable. The site does have promise though, despite the old porn mag lying in the leaf litter below.

I make a mental note of where the filming platform could go and a few minutes later we’re back in our vehicles embarking on what will become a nine-hour whistle-stop tour of the forest’s best goshawk locations.

We visit at least a dozen or so different territories, spread right across the north, west and central regions. Like most of the keepers, Andy doesn’t bother with main roads. Instead we travel with the grain of the woods through a bewildering network of gravel tracks and grassy rides. I used to pride myself on knowing the forest well, but this is a lesson in humility as time and again I have to ask Andy where on earth we are. We visit remote locations that remain free of disturbance all year round, lockdown or no lockdown. We pass beneath the canopies of oaks planted for Nelson, skirt valley mires that still hold isotopes from the Ice Age and discover entire groves of 160-foot-tall redwoods. Such are the haunts of goshawks. It’s not surprising that they should seek out these quiet corners. They’re hard-wired not to break cover or reveal themselves unless absolutely necessary. And, even then, for only a split second before melting away. Sunshine is no friend of theirs; they seem actively to shun it. The goshawk really is a vampire of a bird.

By mid-afternoon I’m developing what I can only describe as nest blindness. The day is passing in a blur, but Andy is relentless. He’s like some kind of nest-finding machine, finely tuned to detect the nigh-on-invisible traces of goshawk activity. A scrap of down here, a splash of mutes there. A freshly plucked snipe feather half a mile from the nearest heath, or simply an instinctive certainty that this is a place worth investigating. He’s known about many of the sites for years, of course, but I hate to think how many hundreds of hours it took him to find them in the first place. Not for the first time, I thank my lucky stars he’s willing to help. But I’m also getting nervous. Not one of the nests we’ve visited is good for filming. Most are obscured behind thick foliage more than ten storeys up, while others are teetering in the tops of spindly trees with no adjacent vantage point from which to film. At a push I could probably make a couple of them work, but it’s not looking ideal. By mid-afternoon, out of mounting desperation, I suggest we revisit our original choice. Who knows? It’s been a week since Andy last visited and although the majority of nests we’ve seen are now freckled with the moulted breast feathers of females a fortnight into incubating, it could be that our original choice was simply a late starter. I’m clutching at straws, but Andy humours me and we set off to check it out.

We use a gate to access a normally busy road slicing through the heart of the forest. Regardless of lockdown, I wouldn’t usually expect to meet many people deep in the woods, but re-emerging into the deserted public domain comes as a shock. The emptiness is disarming, almost dystopian, although this is more than redressed by the sheer beauty of the place. Emerging leaves hang limp and soft and a promising green haze floats beneath the eaves of the trees on either side. This is one of my favourite times of year. The longed-for return of spring quickens the pulse and I open the window to fill my lungs. We cross a cattle grid, the thump-rumble of our wheels echoing through the vast empty woods.

At any normal time we’d be competing with a convoy of Range Rovers and so I take great pleasure in straddling the middle of the road as we weave our way slowly north towards Mark Ash, one of the most beautiful and renowned woods in all of England. I slow down and lean forward to stare in appreciation at the ancient beeches that I pass. Their familiar forms bring back fond memories of time spent climbing them as a boy, learning the ropes while high in their branches and listening to the whisper of leaves from the comfort of my treetop hammock.

Looking back, I realise how much these childhood experiences shaped the way I now view the world. The climbing skills I learned here have carried me to many rainforests and allowed me to witness things I could barely have dreamt of as a sixteen-year-old. But as incredible as the jungles of the Congo, Amazon and Borneo are, to experience such a beautiful part of England so deserted and free from human disturbance as this seems to me a glimpse of paradise. As I drive, I find myself fantasising about a world without us. How long would it take for nature to reclaim and erase our dubious legacy if we suddenly disappeared? A lot longer than any temporary lockdown, that’s for sure. In a country as crowded as the UK, I can’t help feeling that even a few short weeks of respite must do the forest some good? ‘Nature abhors a vacuum’, as they say, and I find myself feeling optimistic about what benefits the coming weeks might bring, despite the tragic circumstances that have brought us to this point.

So, reminding myself to make the most of the privileged position I now find myself in, I try to concentrate on the job in hand, namely keeping up with Andy’s 4×4 without blowing my tyres.

A short while later we’re back at our original nest location. It’s almost a month since we pruned out the branches and the air is a little warmer, but once again there’s an eerie silence. The serrated tops of firs scratch the blue sky above, but down here the air is chilled and still and there’s that same pensive watchfulness that keeps me looking over my shoulder in this little piece of imagined northern wilderness – the home of lynx, wolf and, of course, goshawks.

Goshawks dwell in the corners of time. The moment we blink or turn our heads, they’re gone. So, looking out for any flickers of blurred movement, we pick our way slowly forward through the trees. Nothing. I continue uphill to look for the bird’s head poking out above the nest but Andy stays where he is, squinting upwards, knowing that she’ll be sitting low and tight, and that the best chance of seeing her is from directly below. Sure enough, he beckons me over with a smile. I feel my pulse quicken as I join him. I focus my binoculars on the wispy weave of twigs around the edge of the nest and see the tip of a broad, square tail poking out. ‘Like a piece of two-by-one,’ whispers Andy. She’s lying down with her head hidden, but it doesn’t matter because there’s no doubt: I’m staring up at a wild female goshawk. And from the size of her tail feathers, she’s massive. Not only this, but a scrap of down clinging to a twig tells us that she’s started her annual moult and is now sitting on eggs. The incubation period has begun.

It must have started shortly after Andy’s last visit on 10 April and a bit of schoolboy arithmetic tells us the first chicks should be hatching around 15 May. Quite late for a gos, or at least compared with the other nests we’d visited today. But it is a huge relief, even more so now that I’ve seen just how tricky the other sites would be to film. Nevertheless, I tell myself not to get too excited. A lot could happen between now and late June when the chicks would be due to fledge, but it is an excellent start.

The evening drive home is magical, the gibbous moon hanging in a clear sky above the Wiltshire Downs. I don’t meet the muntjac again but do slow down to swerve round a boar badger rummaging away in the grass with his not inconsiderable backside hanging out in the road. He barely glances up, despite my open window and a steering-wheel-thumping chorus from the Levellers.

Wednesday 22 April

A week has passed since my nest search with Andy. I’ve filled the days with lockdown jobs: rebuilt the log store (enjoyable), painted the shed (tedious) and caught up on accounts (downright depressing), but all being well our goshawks are now a dozen days into sitting on eggs. It’s almost impossible to be precise about these things unless you have a camera already in the nest, but by my estimation they’re about a third of the way through their thirty-five-day incubation period. By now a strong bond should have developed between the female hawk and her eggs and I can easily picture them nestled among soft sprigs of fir, swaddled and protected by the downy breast of their enormous mother.

Goshawks lay between two and five eggs, three or four being the norm. Unlike the beautifully mottled eggs of falcons, those of goshawks are, to my eyes, surprisingly plain and nondescript. A pale-greenish tinge giving way to a dull white a few days after laying. It might help protect them from the attention of egg collectors but does little to hide them from opportunists such as martens, buzzards and crows. I’m sure that a squirrel would also try its luck if it found a clutch unguarded, although a brave predator would quickly become prey should the mother gos arrive back at the wrong moment. Andy and I found a scrap of broken shell beneath one of the goshawk nests we visited last week. It had probably been raided by ravens as there was a pair nesting nearby. Not a lot goes on that these amazing corvids don’t notice and they’re intelligent enough to wait for the perfect opportunity.

So, between the need to keep the eggs warm and shielded, the female goshawk is pretty much tied to the nest for over a month. Still, she needs to eat and so the male’s job is to keep her well supplied with food. He’ll make three or four visits a day, delivering the plucked carcass of a pigeon or songbird to an old nest or suitable branch nearby while announcing his arrival with a flurry of loud calls, which draws her off the nest. The male then takes over guard duty, sometimes sitting on the eggs in his mate’s absence.

Only the female has the brood patch essential for incubation: an area of warm naked skin on her breast, specifically designed for transferring life-giving heat to her developing clutch. The chicken-like side-to-side movement seen when female birds lower themselves onto eggs helps to part their breast feathers and bring brood patch into direct contact with shell. The male’s breast remains insulated by feathers and all he can do is prevent the eggs from cooling too quickly – the equivalent of turning the oven off but keeping the door closed. It’s better than suddenly exposing eggs to the chilly air but it’s only a temporary solution intended to buy his mate a little time to eat in peace.

While incubating, the female also starts her annual moult. All birds need to replace worn-out feathers, which take a real battering when hunting in dense woodland. The bigger the bird, the longer this takes, so the nesting period is a perfect time for female goshawks to begin the moult. Her primaries are the first to go – those long, stiff, blade-like feathers on the outer edge of her wings. These are dropped in opposite pairs and replacements grow at the amazing rate of a centimetre a day. Even so, regrowth still takes around five months to complete, and may not include the tail feathers, which often have to last a couple of years.

All of this places even more emphasis on the male’s ability to provide the female with ample food. Not only is she incubating, but her hunting ability is diminished due to the gaps in her wings as feathers are replaced. Between incubation and moulting, this is a period of low activity for the female. The nest seems to exert an almost magnetic attraction for her that wanes only once the hatched chicks are old enough to be left uncovered. It’s this invisible tether that also enables me to rig the site for filming. A certain amount of disturbance is inevitable, but as long as I don’t cross the line by pushing things too quickly, the strong bond between female and nest should override her instinct to get away from me.

My plan is to adopt a ‘little and often’ approach, installing my camera hide in stages. It’s a question of gently habituating her to the point where she accepts me as an unwanted but essentially benign neighbour.

All of this is fine in theory, but there are no guarantees. Ultimately, it will depend on what’s going on inside the bird’s head, and the mind of a goshawk can be an extremely unpredictable and volatile place. Some are skittish; others brazen. Some lie low and stay put; others slope off the nest and melt away the moment anyone sets foot in their wood. The worst-case scenario is a bird fleeing her nest in a blind panic, not only leaving eggs uncovered and exposed, but also potentially damaging them in her haste to get away.

I’ve been through this same process with many different raptors over the years, but whether it’s an eagle, condor or buzzard, installing a filming position opposite an active nest is always nerve-racking. You never really know what you’re letting yourself in for until you take that first step. The bird’s safety is paramount and always comes first, but things can get tricky sometimes, especially if the adult birds understandably try to drive you away. With these New Forest goshawks, however, my real fear isn’t so much being attacked as unwittingly compromising their breeding success. No one wants a failed nest on their conscience.

Thursday 23 April

It rained overnight and the pre-dawn light is sultry as I load the van for the journey south. I hesitate, not really wanting to step out into the real world with all its virus-related threats and insecurity. Lingering in the front garden, I take the measure of the day.

The air is tinged with the heavy scent of lilac and raindrops jewel the newly opened apple blossom. I can’t resist burying my nose in it. Not as pungent as the lilac, but just as beautiful and the drops of scented water are refreshing on my tired eyelids.

Still stalling, I let the chickens out of their coop for the day. Officious clucking accompanies their businesslike strut to the feeder, which opens with a harsh metal clang as they stand on the treadle. People think chickens are stupid. I’m not so sure. Slow, maybe; but certainly not stupid. Our two veteran hens, both long since retired from egg-laying duty, haughtily ignore me, as is their wont, and once again I’m struck by how reptilian and prehistoric they look. Stabbing at the feed with mechanical jerks of the head before stalking over to sip water from the hanging dispenser.

A throaty call makes me glance up to where a wood pigeon is perched on the telegraph pole above. I recognise him as one of our garden residents. He too is feeling the pull of spring and is all puffed up to woo the ladies, although I’ve yet to see him succeed.

Some people think that pigeons are also stupid. But this I know for a fact to be incorrect. The enormous size of this one supports my sentiment. Over the past year he’s learned how to open the chicken feeder, timing his visits for when the chickens are in their coop, hopping down to waddle onto the treadle. The lid obligingly opens beneath his weight and he tucks in. The early breakfast shift before the hen house opens belongs solely to him.

His antics cheer me, and even the kids look out for ‘El Pijeoto’, as they call him. He’s certainly the avian Don around here. I have a nasty suspicion he may grow too complacent and fall prey to our local sparrowhawk. Unbeknown to El Pijeoto, this is exactly what happened to his predecessor.

One summer morning we were greeted by the sight of a large female spar mantling the splayed carcass of a very big wood pigeon on the front lawn. She’d obviously hit it hard, feathers everywhere, and my first surreal thought was that the kids had had a pillow fight. The hawk could plainly see the boys and me watching through the window, but the carcass was too heavy for her to fly off with, so turning her back on us she’d spent the next hour systematically taking the pigeon apart – much to the macabre fascination of the lads. Having eaten her fill, she flew off to digest, but returned later that afternoon for a second sitting.

By the time it grew dark she’d eaten the head, the innards, opened a hole in the chest to pluck out the heart and consumed most of the leg meat. Strangely, though, she’d avoided the breast, which to me looked the most enticing. Knowing she wouldn’t be back again and that the carcass would otherwise be carried off by a fox, I used my penknife to slice off the two burgundy-coloured fillets and plopped them into a pan of melted butter and garlic. The boys and I had them with eggs, and we couldn’t have wished for a better supper. Some of the finest-quality meat you could ever hope to eat, and about as free range and environmentally friendly as it’s possible to get. So, when my dad teased me about feeding pigeons, I replied that I’m actually feeding the sparrowhawks and – on occasion – us.