The streets are noisy. This is London, after all. But there are corners of refuge. West Norwood cemetery is one. Walk through the gates and you feel the bustle fall away. Find a bench. Sit.
The minutes pass with a pleasing lack of urgency. The world slows. Autumn will be here soon, but we cling to summer for one more day.
August into early September is a time of stasis. “The doldrums”, birders call it. Breeding season is over and autumn migration is still clearing its throat. The swifts went weeks ago, their daily squeals of excitement just a memory. Now the speed prize goes to parakeets, and even they seem subdued by this relentlessly hot, dry summer. One flies over my head into an oak, where it burbles to itself, lacking the energy to issue its trademark squawk.
The quiet is palpable. The clamour of birdsong faded through June, as breeding pairs concentrated on the serious business of raising their broods. By July, singing males were outliers. Come August, they shut up almost completely. No need to claim territory or woo mates at this time of year. In the cemetery, summer bird noise is restricted to the occasional warning chrrrk! of a blue tit or the desultory croak of a crow.
There’s always an exception. A coal tit pierces the silence. Pi-tchew! Pi-tchew! A young bird, perhaps, discovering its voice with the gleeful exuberance of a three-year-old shouting a newly learned naughty word.
Silence returns.
Soon the robin will give its silvery autumn song – more melancholy than the spring version, according to conventional wisdom. Soon blackbirds will emerge from their self-imposed summer recess, fresh of plumage and chipper of demeanour, hopping across the lawn in search of fallen apples. And soon the remaining summer visitors will slip away and the winter ones will arrive. Before we know it, there will be thick jumpers and bowls of soup and piles of leaves. And one evening a month from now, I’ll be walking home and there will be a shrill Tseep! overhead – the flight call of the first redwing, just in from Scandinavia – and autumn will truly be upon us.
But for now, we have the coal tit and the burbling parakeet.
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