I was out in the woods on the hill. The dogs running and sniffing, this way and that. We'd just reached the top at the edge of the trees where I'd stopped to take in the view. Bit chilly but clear. In the distance I could just make out the spire of Felletin church poking up in the 'V' of the valley, briefly lit by a shaft of sunlight, gold against bluey-grey.
Across the valley a patchwork quilt of greeny-yellow fields and browny-purple forests sparkled and dimmed as the sun and clouds switched colours on and off. The tiled roof of a far-flung farm, one minute brown, the next, bright orange. The wispy smoke from a cooking woodfire, curling in sunlit white, then cloudy-grey. And above the distant ridge, an ever-changing sky with clouds scudding in a single direction, left to right, west to east, like crowds hurrying and scurrying in a manic, panic, rush hour.
Yet the only sound was a whistling wind, gently breezing through the bare branches of the beeches behind. And the occasional rustle as Jock and Sprocket hustled and bustled through the crunchy leaves of the brown forest floor.
Then the wind seemed to change its tune. Not so much a whistle, more a drone. Like a distant plane. Or a gang of crows. Getting closer.
I looked straight up, directly above, where the beeches met the sky. And there I saw them, way up high, hardly more than dots. Straining to focus, I could just make out long necks, wide wings, and long legs extending to the rear. Not crows, but maybe herons. Or storks. Or possibly even flamingos, but a bit unlikely. Whatever they were, they were there in their hundreds, maybe even a thousand, stretching across the sky in a half mile wide 'V' formation. Well, not exactly a 'V'; there were vees within vees and groups within groups. And tired stragglers at either end acting as the flappy wing tips of a spectacular flying machine that strung itself out across a busy sky, like a necklace in the wind.
I watched in awe as they flew over the valley from the south, across the wind from the west, cackling and crowing as they headed north. After a minute or two, their cries faded into the breeze and the dots disappeared from view into the distant clouds. Amazing. I thought then that it was a sure sign that winter was over.
But I was wrong.
Took the dogs out for a quick loo run before bedtime after nodding off in my telly-watching chair in front of the stove. Must have been about 2am. Opened the front door and stepped out in my slippers, Jock running free and Sprocket on his lead. Stepped straight into an inch of snow. Bet those birds had a bit of a shock. Maybe they migrated a tad too early, totally befuddled by the confusing signs of a world gone wrong with global warming.
Will Mother Nature ever be able to put things right? I certainly hope so. But maybe, like those herons or storks or flamingos or whatever they were, she's flying into the face of adversity, totally unsure of what the future may hold. Maybe there's no way back.
As I stood on that hill, gobsmacked at the flying flock before me, I found myself humming a song by Neil Young. "Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen-seventieeees..." It's a warning from well over thirty years ago. Time's running out.
P.S. - Have since been informed by Georgie (and Ackers) that these birds were, in fact, cranes on their annual migration to their breeding grounds in Siberia. Not sure where they fly from (Africa?) but they always take the same route, famously flying over the Limousin region on their way north. Apparently it's a bird spotter's dream to witness this impressive sight so I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been there at that time.
