Field Notes

Half a mile of path between the level crossing and the water treatment works. It is not beautiful. There is a fence on one side and brambles on the other, and for most of its length you can hear the road. I chose it because I walk it anyway. That turns out to be the only criterion that matters — a patch you visit under duress gets visited four times, and a patch on your way to the shops gets visited two hundred.

Cold, still, nothing in leaf. Counted eleven species in forty minutes, which felt like a lot for a month I'd written off. Two redwings in the hawthorn at the north end — first I've seen here, and they were gone by the following week. A kestrel over the sidings on three separate mornings, always the same post. Note for next year: the blackthorn came into flower on the 24th, well before anything else. Worth checking whether that holds.

Unrecognisable. The brambles have taken a metre of the path and the whole stretch is loud with warblers I can hear and cannot see. This is the month that taught me to record sound rather than sightings. Half of what's here in summer will never show itself, and a phone held up for thirty seconds catches more than an hour of squinting. Orchids — six spikes on the embankment where the mower doesn't reach. Told nobody except this notebook.