Spring is a time of growth and also a time of returns, so this post is an invitation to write about a return in your greenspace.

This should be something that returns to you at this time of year. Something that you wait for and that is a sign of the season for you.

You might want to think about how you feel whilst you are waiting for this thing to come back. What signs of its return do you look out for? How confident are you that it will come back? How would you feel if it didn’t come back this time? What is the evidence that you see of its return? And how do you feel when you know that it is back?

A Return

Riparia Riparia.

The sand martin.

Often as the days of spring arrive I start to look for you. In the soft sandy bank that lines our stretch river and that you call home.

I think about the journey that you make each year to get here and back. From Sahel just south of the Sahara in spring, then back again in autumn.

I look up how far that it is from there to here and it says that it is 2701 miles. Then I try to find a route on an App that would allow humans to make the same journey on foot. The App comes back to me saying:

“Can’t find a way”

Riparia Riparia

Each spring I begin waiting for you again. When I walk along the river I check to see if the nests that you made in previous years are inhabited again. I look to see if you are swooping over the water or meadow, grabbing your food out of the air. An acrobatic thief on the wing.

I wait and look. And when I can’t find you I wonder:

“Is this the year that you won’t come back?”

2701 miles.

I find an online calculator to work out how long it would take me to walk that far. It tells me that if I could walk consistently at three miles an hour, for twelve hours a day without taking breaks, and managing to cross the desert and the sea that it would take me just over 90 days.

I don’t know exactly how long it takes you to make this journey at the beginning of the year. What I do know is that the heat comes early to Sahel and it is that change which sends you on your way.

I also know that unlike other birds in your family you don’t feed on the wing. You fly by day stopping frequently to refuel. Before you cross the Sahara or the Mediterranean Sea or the English Channel you stop to stock up on food understanding that these are places where you won’t be able to find anything to eat. How do you know? I ask myself.

When you stock up you need to eat just the right amount. To take too much or too little would be a disaster. I read about this somewhere and made a record of it in my notebook:

“The amount of fat they lay down is closely correlated with the size of the barrier, carrying excess fat is extremely costly in terms of impaired flight performance.”

Once again I ask myself:

“How do they know?”

Days pass.

Each day I watch, walk and wait. Each day you aren’t there.

I convince myself that this year I really won’t meet you here again.

Then one day we are walking. I see two dogs running in the water below your nests. It isn’t the time of day that you normally fly but maybe the dogs disturb you because in a moment the sky is filled with you.

You flit from nest to river to meadow to river to nest. Backwards and forwards from earth to water to air to water to earth.

You are home.

The fill the air with kinetic fizz, and my heart with joy and relief. I am glad that you are back again in this place which must be simultaneously familiar and strange.

You have come back to the earth in this place once again, in the same way that I come back to earth here too. And in that mutual convergence we have both, for that moment, come home.

This post was originally shared on Substack on 6th May 2023