Bring out the bunting
It is song-time for corn buntings. These plum, chirpy little birds live around the edges of the corn fields, sitting on barbed wire fences, or on the top of a hedge.
They have phenomenal energy. They just can't stop singing.
It is a simple tune. Imagine somebody rattling a pocket full of coins, or a big bunch of keys. It is the original jingle, but not with bells. Some birders have complained of being bored by the bird, calling the song a dirge.
I myself have never been bored by a bird, even a crow wandering around a field looking for beetles.
Like people walking through Chichester, they are all doing something different. Besides, that strange little skirl almost represents the spirit of the Downs.
It is a husky call of the lonely, wide open spaces, and puts the seal on that magical moment when the barley fields drop their anthers one warm, early summer morning.
In that stillness you can hear the rustle of this vast and silent multitude which is the breath of release as each plant prepares itself for sexual fulfilment. At that moment, the corn bunting sings.
It is as good a sound as the hum of a dropping snipe across the forlorn mist-shrouded haunts of Dartmoor's Grimpen Mire, or the unearthly chuckle of a capercailzie in the pine forests of the Cairngorms.
Woodlarks and nightjars give the resonance of our Sussex heaths, curlews our shores, and song thrushes our gardens.
It is true that as Sagittarius rises in our summer skies before the dawn, before that first green volley in the vaults of heaven, then the skylark tells the knell of passing night.
That is a brave sound I always think, battling away high up there out of sight, a target for night-fighter peregrines.
Those flights are akin to the dawn patrols of the WW1 wire and canvas biplanes of the Royal Flying Corps. But then the skylark comes down to earth, and daylight patrol is to the corn bunting. He risks nothing.
He is no high flier. He even finds it hard during one of our June D-Day gales to land again after the brief flight of 20 yards. He will flutter above the perching place for ten seconds sometimes, trying to find his footing.
And every time he makes one of these daring excursions down the fence at your advance, you will notice how he has all his undercarriage lowered as a precaution.
His legs dangle down like those of an osprey carrying a fish. The split second he has grasped the wire his beak flies open, his head goes back, his speckled breast puffs out, and out comes that curious little ditty.
It sounds as though his throat needs a drop of oil. No sooner is the song delivered, then it is given again, and again, and then again. No pause seems necessary. Like Schubert's famous organ-grinder, he seems driven to perpetuate tune to earn his living.
Imagine 300 of them together in late winter, all tuning up. For that is what is still possible to hear in Sussex.
Three hundred and sixty corn buntings were seen together at Rye in East Sussex in February 2004. Amberley Mount, Beeding and Ditchling were other winter roosts.
This year I saw a flock just outside of Midhurst in fields at Easebourne together with yellow hammers.
A flock of 25 usually spent the late winter near West Stoke as well. But now we come to the bad news. As with cirl buntings these corn field ikons are declining.
Efficient farming may be the culprit. About 70 pairs are all that are left in the whole of Sussex to carry on the race.
The Trundle seems to be the only sure place to hear that rattle of keys and coins.
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Weather for Chichester
Monday 28 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 13 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 29 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: West
