A Real Lark Ascending

The river on our previous visit

We went to Cuckmere on Sunday with Rose's parents. There a twisty river meets the sea at the feet of the seven sisters. Rose and I had been there a few years ago and it was drab and grey but this time the weather was kind to us. The spitting rain of the morning disappeared the moment we sat down to have a picnic beside the river and the countryside/riverside birds were gregarious in the sun.

There were little egrets like whitewashed herons predating the river and a kestrel hovering. We asked a birdwatching couple if they had seen anything and they said, 'not much: meadow pipit, whitethroat…' (neither of which we've ever seen). Then we saw two linnets drinking from a puddle, sparrow-sized but tinged strawberry-pink, some stonechats, swallows, cormorants and herons.

Best of all though were the skylarks. As soon as we got near the river to have our picnic, we could hear their insistent, complicated song that goes on and on without stopping. They nest on the ground in the long grasses near the water and they look like many British birds: brown and grey and black, speckled and striped. It's important to look as dull and mud-like as possible if you're going to nest on the ground, so close to predators. Like many plain-looking British birds the skylarks' secret weapon is their song, and they fly as they sing it. They rise upwards in obvious display mode broadcasting their songs in a wide boastful arc.

Vaughn Williams wrote a piece, a kind of violin concerto called 'The Lark Ascending' inspired by the British soldiers who heard the lark singing in the silences between gunfire over the trenches on the Western Front, and it would remind them of home. As we watched a single lark ascend into the blinding blue sky above us, singing its complex music, I tried to see it as the symbol of hope it was for those soldiers. I was glad to have the chance to see/hear for myself what VW was celebrating and I think you can hear some larkish similarities in the more extended twiddly violin passages.

That little bird in the middle is a skylark (you'll probably have to take my word for it). I took this picture the first time we went to Cuckmere,  though at the time we didn't know what it was.

Skylark singing. It's pretty intense.

'The Lark Ascending' by Ralph Vaughn Williams