"I Hear Spring"
By Leela Stoede
By Biolit 2023
“I hear spring.” Those are words I have heard every year and although I thought I understood their meaning, it wasn’t until this year that I really began to understand their scope. That is what Biodiversity Literacy, specifically our Tuesday morning bird walks, has given me this semester: the opportunity to tangibly watch the world awaken – to be aware of the ever-shifting landscape changing once again.
At the start of the semester, on our first bird walk back, it took all I had in me to wake up and greet the cold and still dark morning. When I left my house, my hands pushed deep into my pockets to keep warm, the stars were still twinkling above my head. Yet slowly, more and more light crept into the sky and the robins began to sing. When we’d all gathered around the Toasty shack, the clouds had become beautiful shades of pastel pinks, purples, and blues that only brightened in hue as we began our walk up the coastal path. And yes, fairly quickly they faded into grey clouds backed by a pale sky, but for the rest of that dim winter day, I held close the little snapshot memory of those early morning colors. I had been awake to see it.
Two weeks following, on our next Tuesday morning walk, I begrudgingly rose to the darkness again. Yet, when I left my house, I was pleasantly surprised that the sky was lighter than it had been previously. We met at the base of Scoony Hill and I looked up to see that above us were the most magnificent, luminescent, rainbow-esc clouds. “Ahh!” I exclaimed in complete bewilderment.
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“They are Mother of Pearl clouds” Michael, a previous VIP student who had joined us that morning informed me.
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I had never heard of Mother of Pearl clouds before. As it turns out they are clouds that form at high altitudes during really cold and dry conditions. It isn’t all that uncommon for them to form in Scotland, but it is rare to see them as most of the time when they form, they are covered by lower-altitude clouds. I told everyone I saw that day about them. Most of my friends hadn’t heard of them either and were bummed that they had been asleep when the Mother of Pearl clouds passed above St Andrews. Had it not been for the VIP I would’ve been asleep then too, but I wasn’t.
That morning was particularly windy, as the rapid movement of the Mother of Pearl clouds above us might suggest, and so Will took our little keen team of bird lovers into a little patch of woodland to listen to the birds sing. I learned the confident song of the great tit – “Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!”- and the one of the slightly more doubtful coal tit: teacher? Teacher? Teacher? I heard the dunnocks “peep, peep” and the chaffinch’s whirling “chew chew chew, pink pink pink.” I pretended the collard dove sang “I love you,” in their three-syllable song. I saw a long-tailed tit for the first time. It was a morning when the landscape around me became alive. The landscape of course would have been full of life whether I was there or not but I became suddenly aware of what life that little patch of woodland held – aware suddenly of how constantly unaware I am in my daily life.
Another two weeks later and I woke up to a slightly brighter sky. It was easier pulling myself out of bed that morning, partially because it wasn’t as dark out and partially because I held with me the memories of the two previous bird walks and what miraculous daily wonders, I had been awake to see. When we got to the tip of West Sands, the sun was just beginning to rise above the sea, the sky the most beautiful bright yet soft yellow. “This is why I’m awake now.” I thought to myself (or more likely exclaimed loudly to everyone me). I was so transfixed by the view that morning, that later when I came home, I painted what I remembered of it.
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The sunrise was only the start of my joy of being awake that morning. On our walk, I learned the repetitive variations of the song thrush song. When we set up stoop at the tip of the west sands, I saw familiar birds like curlews, dunlins, oystercatchers, and purple sandpipers. I learned how to recognize eiders and wigeons farther offshore. I repeatedly called a pintail duck a pinhead – accidentally – and watched the partnership of two peregrines catching their prey. But my biggest joy of all was that I was surrounded by people who loved the world in ways they could share and explain to me.
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In the bird walks that followed, either led by Will or Tom (another VIP student), the sky continued to grow lighter, and I continued to soak up and hold close my understanding of my surroundings which brings me to just the other day. A couple of days before the official start of spring I woke up early and went on a bird walk of my own. I was smiling big leaving my house because the sun had risen before I had, and it was hardly past 7:00 am when a soundscape of bird songs circulated me. I smiled even wider then. I’d always heard the start of spring, the chatter and life slowly growing louder in the trees, but I was suddenly aware that this year, spring sounded very different. In the past, I always heard one thing: more noise, more chatter, more song – an unspecific conglomeration of life returning. Yet this time I thought to myself “it’s not only robins singing now” and as I listened, I was also able to parse out the whirring of the wren, the incessant chatter of the house sparrows, the hurried babbling of the dunnocks the orchestra of the blackbirds and so many more songs I still have yet to learn.
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“I hear spring.” I am in awe of how the meaning of those three words has changed so drastically for me this year; in awe too of how deeply the scope of their meaning has yet to change. I still have a lot to learn.
