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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/05/country-diary-water-rail-spooked-shadow-norfolk
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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Country diary: this bird could be spooked by its own shadow | Country diary: this bird could be spooked by its own shadow |
| (30 days later) | |
| Rockland Broad, Norfolk The water rail’s distressed call tells you everything about its solitary life buried in deepest cover | Rockland Broad, Norfolk The water rail’s distressed call tells you everything about its solitary life buried in deepest cover |
| Mark Cocker | Mark Cocker |
| Tue 5 Dec 2017 05.30 GMT | Tue 5 Dec 2017 05.30 GMT |
| Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 17.01 GMT | |
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| As the light falls in my neighouring parish and the mercury drops, so the bird sounds acquire extra layers of intensity. I’m thinking of the hysterical chinking of blackbirds in the ivy and the disembodied sharp pitt notes of Cetti’s warblers. Most evocative of all, however, are the water rails. | As the light falls in my neighouring parish and the mercury drops, so the bird sounds acquire extra layers of intensity. I’m thinking of the hysterical chinking of blackbirds in the ivy and the disembodied sharp pitt notes of Cetti’s warblers. Most evocative of all, however, are the water rails. |
| Related to the moorhen and coot, this arch introvert is long-legged and long-billed, with a curious laterally compressed body that enables it to thread tiny gaps between reed stems. It is common in our valley but I seldom see one. Tonight there are four, and the way they answer each other’s sounds at 100-metre intervals across the marsh tells you everything about their solitariness and oddity. | Related to the moorhen and coot, this arch introvert is long-legged and long-billed, with a curious laterally compressed body that enables it to thread tiny gaps between reed stems. It is common in our valley but I seldom see one. Tonight there are four, and the way they answer each other’s sounds at 100-metre intervals across the marsh tells you everything about their solitariness and oddity. |
| The quality of water rail calls is not easy to describe but they create an overarching impression of the owner’s tightly wound and distressed condition. This in itself is strange, because Rallus aquaticus leads a solitary life buried in deepest cover; the only conclusion one can make is that each water rail dwells in a drama of its making, a character spooked by its own shadow. | The quality of water rail calls is not easy to describe but they create an overarching impression of the owner’s tightly wound and distressed condition. This in itself is strange, because Rallus aquaticus leads a solitary life buried in deepest cover; the only conclusion one can make is that each water rail dwells in a drama of its making, a character spooked by its own shadow. |
| The calls include grunts, elongated pig-squeaks or a quiet “peep” note that is broken and repeated as a pattern of tiny sound granules. Yet out of the erratic repertoire emerges a high, more urgent, vocalisation that comes eight or nine times in a falling sequence. It is often described as a squeal but it has a lovely purring quality, particularly as each note dies. | The calls include grunts, elongated pig-squeaks or a quiet “peep” note that is broken and repeated as a pattern of tiny sound granules. Yet out of the erratic repertoire emerges a high, more urgent, vocalisation that comes eight or nine times in a falling sequence. It is often described as a squeal but it has a lovely purring quality, particularly as each note dies. |
| Norfolk marsh folk found the perfect word for it – “sharming” - presumably after the sound of the shawm, a double-reed woodwind instrument of the Middle Ages. | Norfolk marsh folk found the perfect word for it – “sharming” - presumably after the sound of the shawm, a double-reed woodwind instrument of the Middle Ages. |
| If you hear a shawm being played you can detect some of the quality of water rails, and as I stand in the gloaming by the ice-blue broad I like to think of the word (and the instrument) coming east through Europe with the Crusades, passing out of the door of the medieval hall, trudging out on to the marsh with the Norfolk eel catchers and reed cutters and finally lodging as a standard piece of the modern ornithological vocabulary. | If you hear a shawm being played you can detect some of the quality of water rails, and as I stand in the gloaming by the ice-blue broad I like to think of the word (and the instrument) coming east through Europe with the Crusades, passing out of the door of the medieval hall, trudging out on to the marsh with the Norfolk eel catchers and reed cutters and finally lodging as a standard piece of the modern ornithological vocabulary. |
| Birds | Birds |
| Country diary | Country diary |
| Rivers | Rivers |
| Norfolk | Norfolk |
| Winter | Winter |
| Wildlife | Wildlife |
| Rural affairs | Rural affairs |
| features | features |
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