Good Morning to the Bird Surveyors
Us crack of dawners
Stumbling from under the duvet with the alarm
Trying not to wake the wife, the lover, the kids, the neighbours.
Bumble headed along country lanes
Flasks of coffee and second breakfast tucked away.
Ours is a society of the solitary
Lone wanderers across the fields.
United by a jumble of survey forms and binocular straps.
Ours is the world of the dawn
Sunrise and curlew calls
Night time predators startled by our arrival.
Ours is the world of the spring
Speeding along so fast we struggle to keep up.
A headlong rush of pairing and production.
Ours is a morning of bird song
Tricky bird song,
Yellow wags and lesser whitethroat. Corn buntings jangling on gate posts.
Ours is a love, more than a love, a vocation.
That drives us from the warmth of slumber
To walk the soggy fields in the early hours while others zoom on motorways to spend the day locked in high rise boxes.
Ours is a mission.
To record it while we can
To witness is while it’s there
To mourn those who won’t arrive this year.
Ours is the morning, Ours is the Sunlight, Ours is the dawning
Good morning to the Bird Surveyors
Spring is waiting for you.
