JGG500

  September   Migration at Tacumshin, Co. Wexford with Oriole Birding Tacumshin is a remarkable place. This unique coastal wetland with its own lexicon - The Forgotten Corner, The Racetrack, The Patches - has a lonely mystique reinforced by an enviable back catalogue of birding greatest hits. It draws birds from across the Atlantic but is also a last stop for those about to jump off the Irish land mass and head south for warmer, and certainly drier, days. Walking out, through welly-sucking reedbed and flooded grasslands, it felt like the Pantanal or the Okavango Delta in European miniature - an adventurous opening to hidden rewards. We were the only people evident in its 1000 acres of lagoon, dune, marsh and reedbed, and roaming this untrammelled wilderness provided a stark contrast with the restricted access to so much UK habitat. Imagine being able to wander freely over Cley or Holkham Marshes with only the noise of sea and birds for company. The first birds we saw were a pa...

  Autumn Migrations '25 In autumn, many bird species, unable to survive a colder climate, move from their breeding grounds to their winter quarters, sometimes over thousands of miles. Birds often exist in a state of flux; on the wing in a great patterning of weather, pushing and pulling them around the globe. Some, like this weeks-old willow warbler, weigh as little as 9 grammes (about the same as a £1 coin) and leave Norfolk on a journey of over 3000 miles across continents, seas and deserts in order to winter in sub-Saharan Africa before returning to perpetuate the process the following summer. It is an incredible feat. There are those like the swallow, whose comings and goings are culturally embedded, seasonal markers. Their congregation in September, twittering on telephone wires like notes on a musical stave, is a sure sign of  'zugunruhe' or 'migratory restlessness'. It is the same flickering agitation one sees in feeding flocks of knot or golden plover when t...

  Merveille du Jour The Merveille du Jour was first named in 1762, in 'The Aurelian' by Moses Harris, itself a product of the Aurelian Society of naturalists . The wonder holds fast To the garage wall, A flake of autumn lichen, Each fine fleck of black Etched into the spring green Of daylight stillness. Those Aurelians knew The power of a name, Given to make us see Beauty overlooked.   November 2025.

  LESSONS FOR LIFE This poem is now as old as some of the pupils who will stand in The Garth at Repton School this year for the Act of Remembrance. Watching them every year as some shivered in the cold, held the silence and intoned the words dutifully, it was impossible not to be reminded of earlier generations, their names engraved on the roll of the fallen, listed on house boards or caught forever in ancient photographs, who had filed into the same chapel to hear lists of their departed fellows and forebears read out by the Headmaster every week. Lessons for Life Ranks of pinched white faces Packed around the Garth: Uniforms, creases, crests, Leather stiffly gleaming. Lines of children, really, Graven in the cold; Unmarked but not unmoved, Learning silence,   Waiting patiently for Each note, weighed On the brittle light. The silver bugle cracks, Like biting down on shot, The boy run short of breath. Then the wreathing step And dying words, ...

  Remembrance Day The long lists of names are most evident in the smallest of places. In every village, the war memorials and rolls of honour are prominent, catching the eye when it becomes dulled by the quotidian or distracted by change, and never more so than now when the red splashes of poppies call out from grey pavements and dull weather.                      Every year as a teacher, I attended the Remembrance Day Service in the school chapel, followed by a silent procession to the cenotaph in The Garth - a beautiful C12th quad - and the Act of Remembrance for the whole school. It was carried out with a military precision, which belied the often chaotic slaughter it commemorated, so that all was in place for the Last Post, two minutes of reflection and a trumpeted Reveille to chime with the bells from the parish church at 11.00am. In truth, military ceremony has never greatly appealed to me but it was hard not to be moved ...

  FIREWORK In memory of Jack D. Hoy, veteran of Dunkirk, El Alamein and Sicily and beloved grandfather.   Spurts of light scribble Illegible rebellions Across the November sky, And upturned faces glow In innocent rapture, Cheer at every crackling pulse, Each juddering percussion. Inside, the happy cannonade Had lit the long fuse, Lying dormant in rows Of spuds and onions, Confused by children’s children And the summer scent of roses, Now hissing history, Driving him deeper Into buried foxholes. The air drew tight And hauled him back To men and metal bursting Like soft, ripe fruit, Burning into blood oases, Cratered fear and cries Of pain and death and loss. The women found him, Curled upon the kitchen floor, Scorched by the bonfire Of his youth Gently, they brought him back, Back to us; Soothing him into his shape, That lovely man.   John Golding January 2025