BIKING BIRDER I March 29th & 30th 2010 Cathedrals and Highnam Wood RSPB Reserve

 

March 29th  2010

On the Road Again    Canned Heat

                                                                                                               

Well I’m so tired after all the cycling but I’m out on the road again. Eventually I got to Frampton by cycling along the Gloucester Ship Canal. Here I set up my little tent and just as I settled down to read Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, down came the rain. As snug as a bug in a rug, well, a sleeping bag actually, I did not care and despite heavy rain pattering the canvas overnight, I slept well.

It needs to be read every year for the fun it contains.

30th March

 

So Tuesday, I awoke to the alarm of my mobile phone at 6.00 am and listened to the dawn chorus which today included the first Willow Warbler [160] of the year and the first singing Blackcap. A Willow Warbler’s song is always one of my favourites, announcing spring with a descending cascade of plaintive notes. So delightful. To see one singing from a lofty perch, trembling as they do so, adds to the pleasure.

               I spent lunch time at Gloucester Cathedral and then in the afternoon went on to Higham Wood RSPB Reserve. 

It was late afternoon when I arrived at the reserve and after a walk around part of the wood, I put my tent’s ground sheet up from the back the hide’s roof in order to give me some shelter before settling down in my sleeping bag for the night. There was no back to the hide and sometime in the night I found out that this was because men come here to meet other men. A torch shone in my face to wake me up elicited a “no thanks” from me. The torch bearer left and I went back to sleep!

 

Having little money, sleeping rough, so to speak, or maybe as I prefer to call it . . . wild camping, was to be necessary thing for me to do in order to have any chance of making it around all the reserves and visitors’ centres in a year. Be it in a tent, a hide, a church porch or a bus stop shelter, I really had no choice. I didn’t have the desire to ask for a night’s accommodation from strangers and to be honest, I loved the adventure of my different sleeping locations. Another advantage was in being able to bird whilst in a sleeping bag. Owls may hoot and screech, early morning birds would start their daily dawn chorus in the cool of each new day and there was always the chance of an encounter with a mammal, be that a Badger, a Fox, a Deer or a mouse.