shuggi drizzly Shetland
skat brief shower Northamptonshire
skew driving but short-lived rain Cornwall
skiff light shower Northern Ireland
slappy rainy West Yorkshire
slottery of weather: foul, rainy Exmoor
smirr extremely fine, misty rain, close to smoke in appearance when seen from a distance Scots
smither light rain East Anglia
soft of weather: overcast, lightly misty or drizzly Hiberno-English
teem to rain Northumberland
thunder-lump rain-cloud hanging over a place Shetland
thunner-pash heavy shower, with thunder Durham
upcasting uprising of clouds above the horizon, threatening rain North Sea coast
very heavy rain rainfall with a precipitation rate of between 16 and 50mm per hour meteorological
very light rain rainfall with a precipitation rate of less than 0.25mm per hour meteorological
virga observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground meteorological
water-dogs, messengers, small floating clouds separated from larger masses, which signal rain Norfolk, Northamptonshire
watery-headed anxious about rain Essex
weet to rain slightly Cheshire
wetchered wet through after being caught out in the rain Lincolnshire
williwaw sudden violent squall nautical
Riverbed, Riverbank
aa ford, shallow place in a river Manx
æ-stán stone taken from a river Old English
alluvial fan fan-shaped deposit of sediment left by a fast-flowing river or stream that has lost velocity due to a change in gradient or profile geographical
áth ford Irish
beul-àtha ford, shallow part of a river Gaelic
bior-shruth old bed of a river’s former course Gaelic
bodha bank jutting out below the water level, good for fishing from Gaelic
brink-ware small bundles of wood, generally whitethorn, used to repair the banks of a river East Anglia
bun of a river: bottom or bed Irish
carse level land by river Galloway
draw-ground stretch of riverbank on which a draw-net was pulled and the fish removed Suffolk
dubhagan deep part of a pool; also the pupil of the eye Gaelic
faodhail narrow channel fordable at low water Gaelic
fleiter prop or pile used to support the bank of a brook or bridge damaged by flood Northamptonshire
foolen space between the usual high-water mark in a river and the foot of the wall thrown up on its banks to prevent occasional overflowing Suffolk
gaffle of ducks: to feed together in the mud Northamptonshire
laid of a river or stream: frozen to the bottom East Anglia
plumb deep hole in the bed of a river Scots
redd, rud hollow or nest made in the gravel of the riverbed by fish prior to spawning English
soss navigable sluice or lock Fenland
srath level ground beside a river Gaelic
stickle river rapid south-west England
thalweg deepest part of the bed or channel of a river or lake geographical
trabhach rubbish of any kind cast ashore by the flood on the bank of a river, or on the seashore Gaelic
watering road or path liable to flooding Essex
wath ford in a river, place through which one can wade Cumbria
Springs and Wells
eylebourne intermittent spring that overflows, usually at the end of the winter rains Kent
fenten well Cornish
gofer overflow of a well Welsh
peath sunken well Cornish
pulk-hole small open ditch or well Suffolk
rock-spring perennial spring, the channels of which are in the fissures of rocks Northamptonshire
shute well Cornwall
stone-water petrifying spring (found in limestone landscapes) Northamptonshire
upboil water springing in the bottom of a well or drain, and powerful enough to cause the appearance of boiling on the surface Cumbria
willis rill from a spring Exmoor
wilm of water: a fount or stream that surges Old English
Swimming and Splashing
bumbel to flounder around in water Shetland
dook to swim in open water Scots
glumadh big mouthful of liquid Gaelic
jabblin, jappin, jiddlin, jirblin, jirglin playing around with water as children do Galloway
plab soft noise, as of a body falling into the water Gaelic
plumadaich making a noise in the water Gaelic
puddle to play messily with or in water Galloway
skiddle to throw flat stones so that they skim on the surface of water Galloway
skite to splash, usually with muddy water Northern Ireland
squashle to squelch, make a splashing noise Kent
wæter-egesa water-terror Old English
Water’s Surface
acker ripple on the surface of the water North Sea coast
beggar’s-balm froth collected by running streams in ditches, or in puddles by the roadside Northamptonshire
caitein first slight ruffling of the water after a calm Gaelic
cockle ripple on the water caused by the wind Exmoor
cuairt-shruth stream abounding in whirlpools or eddies Gaelic
cuilbhean cup-shaped whirl in a stream or eddy Gaelic
eynd water-smoke East Anglia
giel ripple on the surface of the water Shetland
jabble agitated movement of water; a splashing or dashing in small waves or ripples; where currents meet, the surface of the water may be jabbly Scots
lhingey-cassee whirlpool Manx
luddan-mea oily slick on water Manx
raith weeds, sticks, straw and other rubbish in a pool or in running water Herefordshire
sgùm patch of white foam on an eddying river Gaelic
shirr ruffle or ripple on water; also a gather in the texture of a fabric Cumbria
skim-ice wafer-thin ice that forms especially on the surface of puddles and pools meteorological
smother foam on the edge of a river when it is in flood Cumbria
swelk whirlpool, especially the eddies and swirls of the Pentland Firth Scots
twindle of stream-foam: to divide into two rows or braids (Gerard Manley Hopkins) poetic
Wetlands
allan piece of land nearly surrounded by water Cumbria
amod green plain almost encircled by the bend of a river Gaelic
dòirling islet to which one can wade at low water Gaelic
eyot small island, especially in a river English
feorainn grassy area of riverside or shore Irish
haft island in a pool Midlands
halh nook; spur of land between two rivers (place-name element) Old English
holm river island; land formerly covered with water Fenland
peninsula piece of land that is almost, but not wholly, surrounded by water geographical
wæter-fæsten place protected by water Old English
warth flat meadow close to a stream Gloucestershire, Herefordshire
ynys island; raised area in wet ground Welsh
5
Hunting Life
What did I see that morning? Hot winter sun on the face’s brink, felt as red but seen as gold. Air, still, blue. Tremors at the edge of vision: quick dark curve and slow straight line over green, old in the eye. Intersection, shrapnel of down, grey drop to crop, flail and clatter, four chops and the black star away with quick wing flicks.
Let me tell that again, clearer now,
if clearer is right. What did I see that morning? A green field dropping citywards. The narrow track at the bronze wood’s border. The sun low but strong in the cold. Then odd forms glimpsed in the eye’s selvedge. The straight line (grey) the flight-path of a wood pigeon passing over the field. The fast curve (dark) the kill-path of a peregrine cutting south from the height of the beech tops. The pigeon is half struck but not clutched, chest-feathers blossom, it falls to the low cover of the crop and flails for safety to a hedge. The falcon rises to strike down again, misses, rises, misses again, two more rises and two more misses, the pigeon makes the hedge and as I rush the wood-edge to close the gap the falcon, tired, lifts and turns and flies off east and fast over the summits of the hilltop trees, with quick sculling wing flicks.
And let me tell it one last time, clearer still perhaps. What did I see that morning? It was windless and late autumn. The sky was milky blue, and rich leaves drifted in the path verges, thrown from the trees by a night frost and a gale not long since dropped away. That afternoon I was due to drive to Essex to see the archive of a man called John Alec Baker, author of The Peregrine, and among the contents of the archive were Baker’s binoculars and telescopes, with which he had spent a decade (1955–65) watching and tracking the falcons that wintered each year in the fields and coastal margins of Essex. Before leaving, I decided to go for a run up to the beech woods that stand on a low hill of chalk, a mile or so from my home in south Cambridge. A thin path leads to the woods; a path that I have walked or run every few days for the last ten years, and thereby come to know its usual creatures, colours and weathers. I reached the fringe of the beech wood, where the trees meet a big sloping field of rapeseed, when my eye was caught by strange shapes and vectors: the low slow flight of a pigeon over the dangerous open of the field, and the quick striking curve of a sparrowhawk – no, a peregrine, somehow a peregrine, unmistakably a peregrine – closing to it from height. The falcon slashed at the pigeon, half hit it, sent up a puff of down; the bird dropped into the rape and panicked towards the cover of the hawthorn hedge. The falcon rose and fell upon it as it showed above the surface of the crop, striking four more times but missing each time. I ran to get closer, along the fringe of the wood, but the falcon saw me coming, had known I was an agent in the drama since before it had first struck, and so it lifted and flew off east over the beech tops, black against the blue sky, its crossbow profile – what Baker calls its ‘cloud-biting anchor shape’ – unmistakable in silhouette, as my blood thudded.
I had followed the path to the beech woods a thousand times, and I had seen kestrels, sparrowhawks, buzzards, once a tawny owl, twice a red kite – but never a peregrine. That one had appeared there on that morning seemed so unlikely a coincidence as to resemble contrivance or magical thinking. But no, it had happened, and though it felt like blessing or fabrication it was nothing other than chance, and a few hours later, still high from the luck of it, I left for Essex to look through Baker’s eyes.
~
J. A. Baker made an unlikely birdwatcher. He was so short-sighted that he wore thick glasses from an early age, and he was excused National Service during the Second World War on grounds of his vision. But this myopic man would write one of the greatest bird books ever, the fierce stylistic clarity of which must be understood in part as a compensation for the curtailed optics of its author’s eyes. As an elegy-in-waiting for a landscape, The Peregrine is comparable with Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams (1986). In its dredging of melancholy, guilt and beauty from the English countryside, it anticipates W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (1995). Along with The Living Mountain – with which it shares a compressive intensity, a generic disobedience, a flaring prose-poetry and an obsession (ocular, oracular) with the eyeball – it is one of the two most remarkable twentieth-century accounts of a landscape that I know.
If Baker’s book can be said to possess anything so conventional as a plot, it is that one autumn, two pairs of peregrines come to hunt over a broad area of unspecified English coastline and hinterland – a mixed terrain of marshland, woods, fields, river valleys, mudflats, estuaries and sea. Baker becomes increasingly obsessed with the birds. From October to April he tracks them almost daily, and watches as they bathe, fly, kill, eat and roost. ‘Autumn,’ he writes, ‘begins my season of hawk-hunting, spring ends it, and winter glitters between like the arch of Orion.’ The book records these months of chase in all their agitated repetitiveness. Everything that occurs in The Peregrine takes place within the borders of the falcons’ hunting grounds, and with respect to them. No cause is specified for the quest itself, no triggering detail. No other human character of significance besides Baker is admitted. His own presence in the book is discreet, tending to paranoid. We are told nothing of his life outside the hunt: we do not know where he sleeps at night, or to what family – if any – he returns. The falcons are his focus.
~
I reached the University of Essex soon after noon. I was shown into a room with a large table, in the centre of which had been placed two big clear plastic packing crates with snap-lock lids: a life reduced to 100 litres. The table was otherwise empty, so I unpacked the boxes and laid out their contents.
There were several maps: half-inch Ordnance Surveys of the Essex coast near Maldon, a road atlas, a large-scale map of northern Europe. There were rubber-banded bundles of letters by Baker, and other bundles of letters to him from readers and friends. There was a folder containing yellowed newspaper clippings of review coverage of The Peregrine. There was a curious collection of glossy cut-out images of peregrines and other raptors, scissored from magazines, bird-guides, calendars and cards. There was a list of the contents of his library. There were drafts – in manuscript and typescript – of The Peregrine and his second book, The Hill of Summer. There were proof copies in red covers of both books, every paragraph of which, I saw as I flicked through them, had been arcanely annotated by Baker using a system of ticks, numbers and symbols. There were the field journals he had kept during his years of ‘hawk-hunting’. There was a sheaf of early poems. And there were his optics. A pair of Miranda 10x50 binoculars in a black case with a red velvet interior. A brass telescope, heavy in the hand, which collapsed to ten inches, extended to a foot and a half, and was carried in a double-capped brown leather tube. A featherweight spotter-scope, light and quick to lift, from J. H. Steward’s in London. And a pair of stubby Mirakel 8x40s, German-made, in a carry-case of stiff brown leather lined with purple velvet, the base of which had at some point come loose, and which had been carefully repaired with pink strips of sticking plaster that still held it together.
There were also dozens of photographs, some of them still in the branded envelopes of their developers (‘Instamatic – Magnify Your Memories!’). Among them I found a black-and-white shot of Baker taken in 1967, the year The Peregrine was published. He was forty-one at the time. I had not seen it before, though it was the photograph he chose as his author image on the jacket flap of the first edition. He is seated in an armchair and dressed in a collared white shirt and a dark woollen tank-top. He has wavy brown hair and an owlish gaze. He is resting his chin upon his hand, and looking away from the camera, over the left shoulder of the viewer, towards a sunlit six-paned window – we know this because there is a curved reflection of the window visible in each of the thick lenses of the spectacles he is wearing.
There was something unusual about the image, though, and it took me time to realize what it was. Baker’s right hand, the hand on which his chin rests, is distorted. The knuckles of the first and second finger appear to have fused together, and the back of his hand has swollen and stiffened into a pale spatulate shape, so all that can be seen is the plain white paddle of the hand’s back. His fingers are invisible to the viewer, curled tightly into his palm like talons.
~
Baker was born on 6 August 1926 in Chelmsford, Essex, the only child of an unhappy marriage. His parents were Congregationalists: his father, who worked as an electrical designer, suffe
red prolonged mental ill health due to a bony growth that pressed onto his brain (his treatment was, brutally, a lobotomy).
At the age of eight, Baker contracted rheumatic fever, the after-effects of which would be lifelong. It induced arthritis that spread and worsened as Baker aged, and at seventeen he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory form of acute arthritis that fuses muscle, bone and ligament in the spine. Codeine managed but did not eliminate the chronic pain, and Baker underwent agonizing long-needle ‘gold’ injections into his joints, hoping to slow the progression of his disease. But his body nevertheless succumbed: his knees and hips first, and then his hands, which were thoroughly stricken by the 1960s. Thus the fused knuckles, the curled fingers, the stiffened shield of his right hand – so bravely on show in his author photograph.
Despite the pain, photographs from Baker’s youth show him as a cheerful and sociable young man. Golden hair, hands in pockets, always the thick spectacles. Arms round his friends, drunken embraces in wartime pubs, walks along the sea wall. He was six feet tall, deep-voiced and strongly built, though the spondylitis diminished his stature. He was an eager reader and a prolific correspondent: his letters from the war years speak of an intellectually adventurous teenager – passionate above all about landscapes and literature. He would often spend weeks writing single letters, and because of this tended to double-date his letters ‘Comm:’ and ‘Conc:’. A letter to his friend Don Samuel was ‘Comm: Sept 19th 1945’ and ‘Conc: Oct 4th 1945’, and ran to sixty-four pages of blue notepaper. ‘Dear Sam,’ it opened. ‘Here beginneth what promises to be indeed a “weird” if not a “wonderful” letter. Many subjects will drift leisurely across the pages – vague substances phantasmal, trailing clouds of unwieldy imagery …’ It ended with loving descriptions of the ‘delicately balanced’ Essex landscape: ‘green undulating fields, rugged, furrowed earth, luscious orchards, pine clumps, rows of stately elms’. ‘In things beautiful there is an eternity of peace, and an infinity of sight,’ concluded the myopic Baker, longingly.