Nature notes March 2020 - into lockdown

March started with much excitement for me, leading my very first nature journalling session, for the BCN Wildlife Trust at their Paxton Pits Environmental Education Centre. After the horrible wet and windy weather of February we were very pleased to have a lovely spring morning, mild and sunny, complete with bumblebee queens and singing birds. The session was fully booked and everyone seemed to very much enjoy being outside in nature!

I took the opportunity when I had an appointment in town, on the 11th of March, to take a walk on a rather windy, but dry, afternoon. It would turn out to be the last time I'd be able to do that! I wandered along the guided busway, which runs for some of its length alongside a series of gravel pits, and the next day had a walk around my local fields looking for signs of spring...

The rapidly changing situation soon resolved into a simple message: stay home. Luckily I already work from home, so there's no change to that part of my routine. The advice to leave your home only once a day for exercise will force changes for me though; at the start of the year I was thinking about perhaps concentrating on nature journalling in the garden as a project. Looks like that decision has been made for me!

Towards the end of March, just when people were being urged to stay at home, we had a spell of good weather. I thought I'd make the most of it by trying something I've wanted to do for a while - a soundscape spread. I picked a nice sheltered sunny spot in the garden and sat for an hour or so, just listening to everything that was going on in earshot. It was a lovely thing to do, and I'll be doing it again!

So, pretty much confined to the house and garden plus the occasional walk round the fields, I'm thinking that pigeons are likely to feature quite frequently in my journal over the next few weeks... Here's a dented and completely cold egg, found under the conifers. Did it fall, was it a predation attempt? Also, the back lawn is covered in fluffy pigeon feathers - looks like one has exploded!

Life at the end of March 2020 is almost unrecognisable compared with the start of the month. We are now in lockdown because of the COVID-19 virus pandemic, which threatens to overwhelm our health services if it should spread unchecked. So, we head into spring and summer living a new routine, a vastly reduced day-to-day lifestyle, essential movement only, the message being stay at home. But the rhythms of the natural world carry on, as they will always do, and we can find comfort and distraction in them, if only we care to look.