Welcoming May with the Birds

Words by Mark Sparro

“There are twelve months in all the year, 
As I hear many men say,
But the merriest month in all the year
Is the merry month of May!”

— The Ballad of Robin Hood

Hello friends!

We stand on the brink of summer – May Day has just passed– a day for celebrating the arrival of warm sunshine, refreshing showers and sweet air. It’s not hard to imagine why, for countless generations, the arrival of May was an occasion for much merrymaking: food is abundant again, young plant growth brings longed for fresh tastes, birdsong fills the air and everywhere new birth promises that the season ahead will be full and flourishing. Not surprisingly, May Day became associated with celebration, dancing, the gathering of lush greenery and uninhibited sexual and romantic adventures! 

But May Day’s roots reach far back into our cultural past. In the Celtic calendar, it is the festival of Beltain (in old Irish meaning ‘bright fire’), one of the great fire festivals of the year and it celebrates the sun’s entry into the final stage of its yearly cycle which culminates on the longest day and the shortest night. Beltain was celebrated with hilltop bonfires, night-long revels and ‘greenwood marriages’ when couples would spend the night out in the woods together, celebrating their love for each other. Beltain is a fecund, lush, abundant celebration of nature’s rich and powerful life force.

This year’s May Day could hardly be more of a contrast: this May Day our opportunities to celebrate, even if it were still part of our annual traditions, could hardly be more constrained. We cannot gather and connect, our choices are limited and the contexts of our lives have been changed in so many ways. I wonder how it is all affecting you? Some may be lacking in energy, uncertain, feeling that one unremarkable day is slipping into another; others maybe busy, meeting new challenges, establishing new routines, getting things done.  For our nervous systems, whose very biology relies on the cues of safety and security that come from freedom of movement, familiar patterns of behaviour and interaction with our fellows, this could hardly be more of a challenge and slipping into collapse or compulsion could be understood as signs of that stress.

Yet, meanwhile, the natural world continues to unfold as it has done since those ancient generations welcomed in the arrival of May with hobby horses, Morris Men and licentious adventures in the woods. Here on the farm, the fields are bouncing with the antics of new-born lambs, the hedgerows are bursting with hawthorn flowers (‘May blossom’), the woods are full of garlic and bluebell flowers, a cuckoo can be heard in the woods across the valley and the first swallow arrived back from its thousand-mile journey on 17th April – two days after the traditional Swallows Day which celebrates the return of these indomitable birds. Stepping into the fields, the expansion of nature’s growth is almost palpable and the present constraints on our lives seem an incongruity too great to grasp. 

So, I wonder, as I so often do, if we can turn to the other-than-human world to come closer to a calm and connected way of being that both brings us back to nature and to our own natures? Can we turn to nature’s certainties as a way of alleviating the insecurity of the current human situation? Can we lean into the consistency of the seasonal rhythm as a way of reassuring our anxious times? And in doing so, can we find a way to rest and restore our nervous systems even as nature itself is being allowed a rest from the usual frantic crisscrossing, polluting and noisy activities that we inflict on it?

We evolved alongside the rest of the natural world and so our cues of danger or safety can also be gleaned from its signs. Being in morning daylight improves cognition, happiness, and low-grade anxiety. Inhaling the combined smells of a natural environment lowers stress hormones, reduces anxiety and increases the body’s defence systems. Listening to bird song can lift the mood and reduce fatigue. 

Dawn chorus

“A birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world’s.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

One of the most moving, profound and life-enhancing things I have ever done is to get up early, very early, in the spring and sit quietly to listen to the dawn chorus. I feel that it changed the way I hear sound permanently and created a sense of well-being in me that is tangible to this day. This Sunday, 3rd May, was International Dawn Chorus Day, but it’s an event worth celebrating any day of the year. I would love to invite you to take the opportunity to come closer to nature in an attentive and intentional way - to sit and listen to this splendid and marvellous concert of sounds. Yes, you’ll need to get up early (it’s at its best half an hour before and half an hour after sunrise) and wrap up warm but you don’t have to be somewhere remote in nature. A park, your garden, even a city street will all have birds in full voice. Just sit, breathe and listen. Don’t do anything else, not even try to identify which birds you are hearing,  just allow the sound to wash over you, noticing how it comes and goes, and allow yourself to bathe in the tweets, pipes and whistles. The full-throated celebration of the abundance of spring. 

Perhaps, only at the end of that delicious dawn hour, notice how you feel: is it different from how you were before? How does the richness of the season affect you? Is there a sense of life and connection? Can you see any reason to celebrate?

“Birdsong brings relief
to my longing
I’m just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me! ”

— Birdsong, Rumi

Warm May wishes

Mark

Mark Sparrow is a trained counsellor, Ecopsychologist and passionate advocate of life in harmony in Nature. You can find out more about him and his practice over at https://www.marksparrowcounselling.co.uk/.

Mark also runs Angel Cottage Organics at the beautiful Haddon Copse Farm in Dorset with his partner Tom. Find out more about the farm, including a number of courses that make the most of the stunning natural landscape by going to www.angelcottageorganics.co.uk

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