Cooper's Hill
5th May
Setting up in the pre-dawn chorus, I made my first exposure as the sun rose behind a veil of haze; at which moment, too, a skylark rose beyond the trees and began its song as the day broke and the shutter shut.
In the woods the sun shone, and over fresh-flowering bluebells flew Brimstone, Comma, Peacock, Orange Tip and Speckled Wood.
While I worked with a delightful grove of cowslips as the sun sank, a cuckoo called constantly. Church bells began to ring from the wooded valley below, their timeless peal joining in chorus with the cuckoo to create a distant ambience of Englishness; while I sat by a quintessential flower of the English countryside as it used to be.
Walking back in the dark twilight of a clear sky, the electric blue of the bluebell haze; the intensity of colour glorious, unreal and extraordinary.
An owl called just as I returned.