Country diary

It begins with a low rumble like the sound of racing wheelie bins or maybe someone has stolen a train and is driving it down our street - anyway, it is dark and the thunder wakes me into a storm charging through morning. Even when the downpour stops, the air is still ringing wet and fizzing with the static of growth. The fiddleheads of ferns are unwinding and the old green tune they play is as fresh and quick as ever. The leaves of beech, hazel and others that have been shy for weeks are opening wide. All the wild cherry trees are snowy with blossom. Over the woods, there's a silvery-grey sheen as oak buds swell from their dark capsules. The hedge banks flower white with stitchwort, hedge mustard and white deadnettle, and there are brimstone-yellow clumps of cowslip everywhere. As the sunshine brightens, the first holly blue butterflies jiggle across the vegetation like dots of cobalt light. Small tortoiseshell and white butterflies join the bumblebees through the spaces full of flower.

The following morning there is another kind of thunder which wakes me: it's the dawn chorus. The birds seem to find their collective mind even though they are of many species and have many songs. From the fluid stream of willow warblers to the clockwork hiccup of pheasants, the birds find their voices at dawn. A chorus is a coordinated response to the episodes of others, a single simultaneous utterance or the bit of the song we all join in on. But this is a phenomenon with quite different dimensions of time and space which spans the divisions between species and individuals and affects all who hear it. It is the sound of spring, the rushing, roaring recklessness of growth and rejuvenation. And as if to personify that explosive spirit, the swifts have returned.