One million songs

Ham Wall, Somerset

Today my beloved and I went to Ham Wall in Somerset. We had promised ourselves for a long time that we would go and see the starlings and their flocking display. The birds - over a million at this site - come from their feeding grounds during the day and congregate in huge pods, swathes and waves which seem to undulate and pulsate with a life of their own. They come wave after wave for an hour at dusk.

I had seen clips of this phenomenon before on the internet, but I wanted to go with Drea so that we could watch the event together for real.

Here are some of the pictures I took - click on them to get a larger view:







The birds are masters of the air. It may seem obvious to say that none of them seemed to collide with any other in the flock, but the flowing three-dimensional shapes almost became entities in their own right. What was particularly interesting was that there was no sound other than the rustling of the wings. It sounded like satin being drawn across the back of your hand.

Once they had poured out of the sky into the reed-beds they were then free to discuss the doings of the day and to gossip about any late-comers. My mind suddenly shifted from one element to another, from air to water. I wondered if I would ever see those great shoals of fish which exhibit similar behaviour.

And - just for a moment - the sussuration of the voices of the starlings became the surf caressing a distant shore.

Happy Samhain

Happy Samhain to all who read this.

Samhain is one of the eight solar festivals of the year and marks the start of Winter.

How are these festivals determined? Well there are four fixed points in the solar year. There are the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The solstices occur when the Sun gets to its highest or its lowest point in the sky as viewed by us on Earth. As you probably know the Sun seems to get higher and higher in the sky (as observed at noon, for example) every day as we approach the longest day (June 21st). After that the Sun does not rise so high at noon until we have the shortest day of the year (December 21st) six months later. (Intimately connected with this is the Moon's apparent travel. Winter full-moons are high in the sky and summer full-moons are very low).

Between the longest and the shortest days we have one day in Spring and one day in Autumn when the day and the night are of equal length. These are the equinoxes and occur around 21st March and 21st September. Thus we have four fixed points. So how do we get eight?

The other four festivals occur half-way between any of the four fixed points. So taking them in order:


The shortest day (the Winter solstice)on the 21st December, is Yule.

Between Yule and the Spring equinox is 2nd February, Candlemas.

Then we have the Spring equinox (Ostera) on 21st March.

Between the Spring equinox and the Summer solstice, on 1st May, we have Beltane.

Then the Summer solstice (Lithia) occurs on the 21st June.

Between the Summer solstice and the Autumn equinox we have Lammas (or Lughnasadh, pronounced Loose-nah) on the 1st August.

Then comes Mabon, the Autumn equinox on the 21st September followed by,

Samhain (pronounced Sow-een) between the equinox and the Winter solstice.


The precise times and dates of the festivals can be determined astronomically and are shown on this site.

I have indicated some of the old names for the festivals above. Some, it can be seen, have been appropriated by the Christian calendar, with holidays such as Easter, Hallowe'en and indeed Christmas being shoe-horned in to the traditional dates.

We are not Pagans or neo-pagans and do not worship anything at these festivals. It is just a chance to sit down and have a nice meal and to talk. It is an opportunity to observe the turning of the seasons and to experience what nature is doing. The festivals are not commercial and therefore we can make of them what we wish. (For me, the biggest of the festivals is Yule and we make more of that festival than any other - but more on that at another time.)

But because the festivals are not commercial and they largely pass by unknown, we can just go out, have a walk, notice what is happening to buds, leaves, sky and Sun and get back in tune with the turning of the year. We collect fruits, leaves, corn or flowers - whatever plants are symbolic and redolent of the season - and make a display for the meal. We keep some of 'nature outside' in our home and in our heart. But how does observing these festivals feel more natural?

Well apart from knowing that you are celebrating something natural you also get to really see nature. We in the West live in a world where summer is depicted as that time when it is nice, hot weather, we are not at work and can go on holiday. If it's poor weather, well, "that's the summer gone then". Spring is the first few nice days after winter, and so on. But it is not so.

June the 21st is Mid-summer just as the 21st of December is Mid-winter. Winter, then, stretches from the start of November to the start of February, not just when it is cold and snowy. Look at the snow at the end of January - there are snowdrops and crocuses peeping through! These are the first flowers of Spring. Spring has started, my friend!

Appreciating the seasons by what nature shows and what it does is much more natural and more 'real' than what we are directed to appreciate by the needs of modern living. By looking at the real seasons we return to the seasons of our childhood - to almost how we 'used to think of the seasons'.

Living and appreciating the patterns and timings of the world in which we evolved is natural. And I, for one, feel more in tune with the world - and with myself.