Sea Pi(e)pers

I had to go to Maldon to collect a document and afterwards went for a walk at Heybridge Basin.

There's a little island in a lagoon behind the sea wall. Last year I photographed oystercatchers here. This year it has been colonised by a flock of very noisy black-headed gulls. I walked the sea wall to the song of reed warblers and heard the cuckoo for the first time. I photographed a St. Mark's fly on gorse five days late and met a lovely pair of golden-doodles.

On the way back past the island I heard an unmistakeable piping. A small flock of oystercatchers/sea pies approached from the river and repeatedly made low passes over the island as if to say to the gulls that it was theirs.

This got me singing Piping Down The Valleys Wild in my head. I looked the song up when I returned and discovered that it is actually a poem by William Blake. Wish I'd know that when I sung it at school. I can find it set to all sorts of music but not to the tune that I know. :(

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again.'
So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer.'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.'
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear. 


Sort of appropriate whilst enjoying the innocent rural pleasure of piping, reeds and water.