These days everybody knows that St Valentine's is the birds' wedding day, but it wasn't always so. Apparently this custom travelled up from Sussex (where, I'm told, they'll believe owt). All we adolescent country lads knew about St Valentines day was that it was the unofficial start of spring, a season that invariably made our pimples shine more brightly.
Well, given a bit of imagination, last weekend was spring-like. The sun warmed our faces, the first celandines shone like gold coins along the wayside, and morning bore hints of a dawn chorus around the Cartford. As yet the principal players have been the robin, the wren and the bluetit. The real heavyweight songsters, thrush and blackbird, will join in and the chorus will swell toward its climax around the beginning of May. Meanwhile, the geese are heading north to their Scandinavian breeding grounds, along with the fieldfares and redwings. Within weeks the caravanners will arrive, and the first swallows will be swooping under Cartford bridge.
But don't shed the long johns yet.
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