Dawn Chorus

Today we were up, and ready to leave  the house by 3.45am, a tad early for my liking! But it is worth it once a year. We were helping to lead a Dawn Chorus walk at the Itchen Valley Country Park near Eastleigh.  The first birds we heard were robins, song thrushes and blackbirds, as we had expected. Later, we heard  blackcaps, wrens, and chiffchaffs and several other species, but sadly no cuckoo. We finished by looking over the river Itchen,  shown here in my blip  taken at 6am. Fortunately,  it was dry and not too cold; later we had  drizzle on and off all day.

I have spent most of the remainder of the day reading Helena  Merriman's book," Tunnel 29", the true story of  life  in post war Berlin and, in particular, the 1960s when residents in East Berlin, aided by residents in West Berlin were making very brave attempts to go over, or as in this case,  under the Wall. I heard the book being read on radio 4 last year and it was gripping  then, but even more chilling to read now, since Russia invaded Ukraine and occupation and repression is happening all over again.