I wasn’t the only one up early. As I biked through the back lanes, with the dawn mist just lifting, the curlew’s cry sounded out. There’s nothing like the sound of a curlew. The haunting lilt of notes blew through the bare, early spring fields like a breeze from the wilderness. Impossible not to stop when you hear a curlew. I pulled up, got off my bike, and leaning against a gate, listened. The field seemed full of curlews – there were at least a dozen. They’d just arrived here from the coast, where they overwinter. Even as I stood there, the last of the mist melted, and the birds were revealed in all their breeding finery. Their grey-brown feathers seemed to glow, their white back flashed like lightning. The music poured from their huge, slender, tender beak