5 seconds of woodland magic
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Why Things are Seen
It is a damp April morning in 1978 and I’m on a sand dune overlooking the Solent.
‘There are seven reasons,’ says Corporal Kelly to the 24 or so shaven headed recruits gathered there, ‘why things are seen.’ He has an attractive west Irish accent that suggests, ridiculously, to most of us that he is somehow on our side. He is, as it happens, but it will be weeks before we understand why. Anyway, we listen intently, not because we are polite, but because not to do so invites trouble. These are very early days in uniform, the Queen’s shilling still new minted in our metaphorical pockets, and we do what we are told.
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He suggests that we write them down, as we will be tested later. This is the British army, and we will get tested on everything, including ironing our underpants and holding our cutlery in the approved manner.
‘Shape, shine, shadow, sound, silhouette, spacing and movement.’
He pauses momentarily.
‘Now look out at the shingle, and tell me when you see my colleague.’
We never do until Corporal West stood up, but the point is made.
We now know why things are seen.
Nearly 50 years later, one of the many reasons I originally signed up to be a wildlife guide at Knepp was to try to become a better naturalist which, among other things, includes being a better observer.
Corporal Kelly is sadly now in the great Guardroom in the sky and much missed, but his various lessons live on vividly in this his one-time student, never more so than when I try to help my guests see more, and see it quicker, by parroting those seven reasons on many of the safaris I lead. My near total immersion in nature for the last decade has persuaded me that nothing has changed in those intervening decades, and that it is a useful skill to pass on.
High on its nest, we see a white stork. ‘Shape, shine and a bit of silhouette’ they say.
Across Pond Field, we see 16 Exmoor ponies in the shade of an isolated oak.
‘Shadow,’ they say.
Across a path through the scrub, a silent nightingale flits and then flits back.
‘Movement’.
A Turtle Dove turrs its summer song from the branches of a dead tree.
‘Sound,’ someone suggests, before we see its tiny profile through a thin screen of leaves.
A young red stag stares at us out of its muddy hole in the new beaver lagg.
‘Silhouette’. And so on.
Five minutes later, we hit the jackpot. We are watching Ringlet and Small Skipper butterflies when a pair of Goshawks knife their way through the plantation to the right of the ride we are walking, just 30 metres from us. We are already looking in their direction which is good, because, if we hadn’t been, we would surely have missed those assassin flights. I tell them that they are almost certainly hunting Grey Squirrels.
‘Movement,’ someone says.
They are right, of course, and you could add shape if you wanted, but I explain that what we have just seen is far more significant than mere lessons.
In my experience, it is vanishingly rare to see Goshawks hunting in pairs, and we are doubly, maybe trebly blessed to do so on this hot morning.
But I still find myself articulating my silent gratitude to Pete Kelly- (he eventually became Pete to me, and I Roger to him)- for explaining to me why it is we see things.
Old enough to know better 