Glimpses of Eden

No cathedral, state room or recording studio has an acoustic like late autumn. On crisp days, a leaf can be heard falling more than 30 yards away. Human voices wander a quarter of a mile up the lane. Shouts can fly a mile.

Reading by an open window, I soon found my attention gently persuaded from the page. Our local “murmuration” of starlings were whistling and piping in the large tree nearby. It was as though a little shining stream of sound was flowing over the village roofs. Nearer, right under the window, sparrows chirped; less musical perhaps but just as lulling: the splashes and laps of a home harbour.

Naturally a dog began to bark; for a while its yelps rang on the air, then it fell silent as though listening to the corvid family, whose vocals play a prominent part in November’s score. Magpies with their rattlesnake clatter, jackdaws’ ringing, falsetto laughter as they dare each other to ever tightening spirals over the chimney pots, rooks already thinking of February’s nest and the lone carrion crow, a black note played from right at the bottom of the keyboard.

In the sunshine a woozy wasp buzzed at the eaves. A flotilla of finches chimed overhead. Then a heron, in a burst of remarkable silence, passed massively by, paddle wings conducting the way to the next damp field.