132 A bird watcher’s outpost beneath the telegraph wires

Full Episode description

Warm sunlit afternoon. Late August. On the nature reserve at Muckling, beside the Thames in Essex. A bird hide. Perched on a steep bank amongst reeds, looking out on a strip of newly exposed mud. Tide falling. Water receding. Soon, when enough mud is exposed, maybe the curlew will come.

“Listen” a voice says. From inside the bird hide. Though empty, someone is there. Between the bright of the slot windows, within the shadow, there’s a figure, of an old man. Not creaking its timber floorboards, he moves towards the threshold, but then stops. “Can you hear it?” He asks, in a soft brown tone. A curl of smoke from his pipe wafts on the breeze.

Softly washing tidal water. Breezes rustling in tall reeds. A cricket, there but barely perceptible, hiding somewhere. Basking in the sun. This place, beside the bird hide, though near habitation, feels beyond civilisation. On the edge of something else. Like an outpost. But what can the old man mean? A single drifting seagull. Faint noises of the bankside industry. Or is it that nearby clink, of loose metal on stone?

“It’s all around,” he says, slowly raising his arms as if to fly away. “In the all around”. Subtle. There, and not there. A low, undulating hum. A slow, quavering tone. What is it? The old man smiles. “They say it’s the wind in the telegraph wires”. Then backs, and disappears into the shadows inside the bird hide. As if in reply the sound rises, and falls. Rises, and falls again. Marking the quiet. Marking the time. “It’s just the voice, of the wind”.

* We recorded this piece of captured quiet on the almost completely deserted nature reserve at Muckling on one of the last days in August. The wind in the telegraph wires is subtle, and worth finding a pair of headphones and a quiet place to listen. At about 29 minutes the curlews do come. We still can’t work out what is making the occasional chinking noise. There was nobody at all about. Someone (not any of us) does walk along the path next to the bird hide near the end.