5 July 2025

Well, in my walks I rarely found

A place less likely for a bird to form

Its nest – close by the rut-gulled wagon road

And on the almost bare foot-trodden ground

With scarce a clump of grass to keep it warm,

And not a thistle spreads its spears abroad

Or prickly bush to shield it from harm’s way,

And yet so snugly made that none may spy

It out save accident – and you and I

Had surely passed it in our walk today

Had chance not led us by it – nay e’en now,

Had not the old bird heard us trampling by

And fluttered out, we had not seen it lie

Brown as the roadway side …

You’ve been there, haven’t you? But you’ve never been able to recall the incident so perfectly. You’re walking down a country road. Your eye is caught by a slight movement in the embankment. Suddenly, a bird flies out and reveals a secret – her nest!

The poet is surprised. The location is so vulnerable. There’s a little grass to keep it warm. And there’s no thistle nor thorn to protect it. But there’s no need! The bird has built her nest in such a way that its inconspicuousness is its own defence!

John Clare goes on to describe it in great detail – hay plucked form ‘the old propped-haystack’s pleachy brow, withered leaves fallen from the ‘snub-oak dotterel’. It’s lined with feathers and full of eggs ‘scarce bigger e’en than peas’ with ‘spots as small as dust – and of a faint and pinky red’.

Then he meditates on the surrounding dangers – grasshoppers who could break the fragile shells, lowing oxen, restless sheep and the trampling horses of whom it might be said ‘no grass springs but hungry horses bite’. The whole sight astonishes the poet, ‘Yet, like a miracle, in safety’s lap/ They still abide unhurt and out of sight’.

It is the pettichap, a bird smaller than a wren and not often seen! But Clare notices things which most of us would never see and is able to record what he sees with so much elegance. His acute observation and rare sensitivity to what is happening in the natural world  has revealed and celebrated  a hidden corner of God’s creation. And we are the richer for it!