Yesterday’s thick ‘harr’ of sea fog has thankfully departed for this morning’s patrol, the weak sun punching through the patchwork cloud and illuminating the English Channel in bands of glittering silver.
Leaving the Learning Centre, a solitary Magpie sits sentinel atop the island of Hawthorn scrub, as a pair of Goldfinch flit away as my appearance.
The unusually still air is awash with bird calls, as Robin, Chaffinch and Wren give voice and stake their claims to their summer territories. These mellifluous songs are underpinned by the coarser cries of Carrion Crow and Jackdaw, bickering in the canopy of Small Copse.
Along the drier fringes of the saturated path, tiny mounds of displaced soil are sign of Yellow Meadow Ants beginning their season of industry.
Reaching the Lighthouse track, the blooms of Hairy Bittercress are delicate white stars above staggered sets of minuscule leaves, while the Blackthorn grows heavy with swelling, creamy, green-tinged flower buds.
Rarely absent, the irregularly-flowering Gorse continues to scatter a patchwork of hearty yellow across the slopes of Lighthouse Field. As I descend, the burbling melodies of competing Skylarks are even heavier than last week.
Two contractor vans overtake me en-route to the Lighthouse, their intrusion into the quiet of the National Nature Reserve stirring a flock of ten Wood Pigeon into clattering flight. Approaching the tangled Gully, more unusual calls drift toward me; the machine gun trill of the rare Cirl Bunting, the wheeze of the increasingly uncommon Greenfinch and even a teasing, though less likely suggestion from the Merlin app of Tree Pipit.
As I creep down the grassy slope dusted with Yellow Fieldcap mushrooms, a Blackbird rattles off an alarm call, and the profusion of unusual species falls silent, eventually replaced by the more commonplace calls of Chiffchaff, Blackcap and Dunnock.
The garrulous croaks of our resident Ravens powering overhead stir me from my contemplative lean on Horseshoe Bridge, and I begin a steady ascent towards the Herston Trail. The strained alarm call of a Meadow Pipit alerts me to the Kestrel making a languid pass over the Gully, on the search for unwary prey.