Introduction
At the beginning of each month I like to locate myself, metaphorically, within what is happening around me: the annual cycles, the celebrations and festivals of the calendar, the arc of the stars, the waxing and waning of the moon and the passage of nature whispered on the wind.
This is the fifth instalment of a regular monthly almanac I write to share with you. It is, in the main, a figurative contemplation, seasoned with some of the more prosaic anchor points and markers that I personally cherish.
Inspiration comes from many sources and I have listed some of these below.
Here we look ahead to the month of April in the year 2024.
Calendar
Monday 1 April - Easter Monday
Monday 1 April - April Fools’ Day
Sunday 14 April - St Tiburtius Day (First cuckoo)
Friday 19 April - Taurus Season
Tuesday 23 April - St George’s Day
Moon Calendar
Tuesday 2 April - Last Quarter (4.14am)
Monday 8 April - New Moon (7.20pm)
Monday 15 April - First Quarter (8.13pm)
Wednesday 24 April - Full Moon (12.48am) Budding Moon, New Shoots Moon, Seed Moon
Sky Calendar
Monday 8 April - Partial solar eclipse
Wednesday 10 April - Close encounter between Jupiter and waxing crescent moon after sunset
Sunday 21 April/Monday 22 April - Lyrids meteor shower visible overnight
Tuesday 23 April - Close encounter between Virgo star Spica and waxing gibbous moon before sunrise
The Rover’s Almanac: April 2024
Although there is still sleet, sometimes snow, and a cold breeze from the south-west with frost on the ground in the morning, fair maiden spring has returned.
Her eyes are clear sky-blue and golden strands of sun highlight her hair. She has a warm touch, which softens shoulders and rouges cheeks, and her kisses produce a thousand freckles.
I felt her coming through the woods at the beginning of March, but, as so often happens, she lost her way in the wild wet wind. We saw no sight nor sound of her for some time.
Feared lost, she persevered, and now at the beginning of April, she finds us. Here she comes, and what a radiant blessing she is.
In her presence, the birds perform, flying around in pairs, getting busy, making nests, nesting eggs.
I have seen tits tussling in the tree branches and watched two male pheasants getting cocky, heads up, feathers ruffled, competing for top spot.
In the garden we are visiting, a little rabbit appears at the tool shed door one morning to bask on the grass bank. That same day, there were more bunnies at bedtime, flopping and hopping at the sun-warmed edges of the valley.
Taking in the fine weather outside, Andrew, our host, heralded the long-celebrated impending return of the cuckoo this month.
The bird’s first call is traditionally heard on April 14th, the feast day of St. Tiburtius, after it has migrated north from Africa and may I take this moment to remind everyone, it is traditional to pen a letter to The Times, on hearing the first cuckoo in spring.
Tell it to the locked-up trees,
Cuckoo, bring your song here!
Warrant, Act and Summons, please,
For Spring to pass along here!1
Anticipation and delight quickly take flight as we imagine the high-pitched, piercing calls of the first swifts set to arrive soon after the cuckoo, although sadly no swallows in these parts.2 They prefer cliffs and cathedrals.3
Last year in Suffolk I didn’t see a swift until early May. The year before that I saw my first one in April, carving up the skies above the sweeping Georgian crescent terraces of Bath.
The new season’s migratory guests will replace winter visitors and we’ll sadly say farewell to geese, swans and waders when they leave for cooler climates.
I will miss the vast gatherings, group landings, long trailing skeins and accompanying cacophony of calls the geese of Moray have shared with me this winter on cold mornings and crisp evenings.
Driving past farms in the Highlands we have seen lots of calves and lambs, referred to by my children as baby sheep and little cows along with accompanying exclamations of joy.
Lambing goes on throughout April. They are vulnerable and the farmer must try and prevent his stock being killed or maimed. Just after they are born, when the ewes are too weak to get up and protect the young, gulls or crows will sometimes swoop down and peck out the eyes of the lambs.4
In The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee, Colonsay crofter Donald Gibbie kills a gull and tacks its white body, smeared with blood, to a fence post, as a warning to other gulls to stay away from his flocks.
April sees fertiliser being spread on grazing fields, which will be cut for hay and silage later in the year. Potato crops are being planted, and drilling starts on oil seed rape and vining peas, while cereal crops will be sprayed with fertilisers or pesticides.
I tasted this year’s first wild garlic on a hillside behind a house near Kinloss, together with Red, our six-year-old, who loved the pretty white flower buds our friend Col burrowed out for us with his searching fingers. This part of the ransoms initially tastes like freshly popped garden peas before the garlic flavour kicks in behind.
The clocks spring forward and I get up early before sunrise on the eve of April.
In the darkness, an otherworldly sound pitches down toward me from on high. Snipe is drumming in the dark: a strange, resonant, vibration in motion.5
Beneath this wondrous sound, with tea in a flask, wearing two coats, gloves and my green woollen Fjallraven hat, I head off toward the moor.
A wisp of blue-grey cloud streaks across a patch of pink sky. There’s a cool breeze coming from the west off the rise which numbs my fingers when I remove my glove to type.
Ne'er cast a clout till May is out, so the saying goes. The old English meaning of the word clout means cloth or clothing. Another, longer version of the saying: Button to chin, till May be in, cast not a clout, till May be out, suggests that I was right to wear two coats and a warm hat.
The sun is coming. Robin and wren sing me along. Something flashes past, low over the heather to my right.
In the murk before daybreak, the yellow spots on the gorse shine their light first. A small solitary pine on the high ridge looks like a lone figure, watching.
I veer off track, crossing the grouse butts and then hurdle Cose Burn to take a more direct route up to the top.
Big stones lurk in the orange gloom beneath the surface of the water, whose temperature I test with the tips of my fingers. It’s silky and cold. The babble of the brook stills the air. There’s a touch of frost on the haircap moss. I’m sheltered here, out of the wind.
Silver birch stands sentinel on the side of the ridge. Halfway up, I stumble across a wet feminine hollow in the earth, with moist grass and soft moss surrounding the entrance. Deep inside her, water runs over smooth secret stones held in the folds of the soil. Captivated, I think about reaching a hand in to touch but catch myself and show some respect before moving on, chastened.
As I crest the ridge a hot orange sky under-lights the purple clouds. Skylark announces the day, and half moon, perched on the horizon in the south, gathers up what remains of night.
Skeletal silhouettes of wind turbines stand tall on the far horizon, their faces turned toward the rising sun, in reverence.
Beside me are animal bones picked clean by wind and raven’s claw. They shine in the undergrowth.
Looks like some of us didn’t make it this time, couldn’t survive the winter, won’t see spring this year.
In time, winter will come for all of us, and we will away. We must.
In April, I open my bill
In May, I sing night and day
In June, I change my tune
In July, far off I fly
In August, away
I must6
I descend downhill between soft spongy grassy mossy mounds that give generously underfoot and then sit on a fallen tree, nestled in by the roots at the foot of the trunk.
From afar, I can see our van parked next to the farmhouse, with my family asleep inside.
Someone lights a fire in the house, smoke appears from the chimney.
The breeze gets up in the still-standing trees with me sitting on their fallen comrade.
They beseech me. Questions are asked. The infinite crowds in. A shiver runs down my back.
After the trees have spoken, a tiny little dunnock comes to me, singing beautifully, alighting on one branch after another. Nearby, for balance, wren rattles her alarm.
On my return, here again is the edge of the burn: the threshold.
In one stride I step in and claim another spring April, leaving the mystery behind, for now.
Sources
The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2024 by Lia Leendertz
Sacred Earth Celebrations by Glennie Kindred
Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain published by Readers Digest
Sky Guide (App)
BBC Countryfile
Cuckoo Song by Rudyard Kipling
The Cawdor Estate in the Highlands of Scotland
A delightful turn of phrase borrowed from Andrew Floyd.
The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee
Later, my friend who’s lived here for more than a decade, tells me it’s more likely a woodcock, flying up and down the valley, marking its territory. Belonging to the sandpipers, snipes and phalaropes group, the woodcock is a large, bulky wading bird with short legs and a very long straight tapering bill. It is largely nocturnal, spending most of the day in dense cover. Most of the birds in the UK are residents - in the autumn birds move to the UK from Finland and Russia to winter here. The breeding population has been falling in recent years, perhaps because of less habitat as conifer plantations become too mature for Woodcocks to find open enough breeding areas.
Cuckoo by Cosmo Sheldrake, son of Rupert Sheldrake