How much bad news can we take?

Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, water company shambles, climate change - and so much more.

I’m happy to report that a minor and personal tragedy appears to be resolving itself, giving me at the very least some hope of a brighter springtime.

On my boundary is a pond, a modest one, but ancient and lovely and long a source of inspiration. I’m still unsure if it might have been a marl pit or more likely, what remains of an old stew pond as a religious house did exist in the environs pre-Reformation. Over many decades it has become ever more shallow and I have always been anxious over its fragility. That was exposed last summer to a soul-destroying degree. I’m recollecting that the really hot weather of summer began with June temperatures in the 30s. There was no let-up as July melted into August and September whilst the heat coincided with minimal rainfall, not even the occasional storm to provide relief. The lawns parched. Soil baked rock hard. And, of course, inch by inch, my beloved pool shrank daily before my agonised eyes.

It was on the island of this pond that two adult moorhens raised three chicks, tiny puff balls of black on legs so long and spindly that they walked on stilts and looked like they were living in a cartoon. Early in this story, one chick became separated, disorientated and despite what little we could do, disappeared. And still the pond withered until the island was all but joined to the bank and the waterfowls’ security was fatally compromised.

A second chick was taken and the tracks around suggested the presence of a fox. In late July, the adult male was picked off by a sparrow hawk and that left the mother and final chick to fend for themselves as the pond finally gave way to mud. Now both birds spent most of their lives in our garden where we fed them, like we were doing the rest of the birds. It seemed there might be some hope for a short while until an alfresco dinner was interrupted by the sight of a farm cat making off with the last surviving chick. I’ll tell you that the tragic apparition of the cat with two feebly kicking legs twitching from its jaws did little to stimulate appetite or conversation.

And what, of course, of the fish? From way before my time, the pool has held a population of crucian carp hanging tenaciously onto life since goodness knows when. By August, they had disappeared along with the last dregs of the water. Undoubtedly, herons had picked off a few when all that was left was a knee deep puddle, but the majority I assumed had perished. I had managed to save a few and had transported those to a neighbouring pond, but by the time the ceaseless rains did eventually come, I assumed the damage had been done irreparably to both crucians and moorhens.

So where’s the good news I was talking about? Friday just gone was warm and moderately sunny. Guess what? After six months or more our female moorhen appeared with a fine, bustling male partner and so it looks as though there could well be chicks again this spring and summer. And, yes, in the clear water we watched a score or more of crucians feeding in the silty shallows that only just come free of ice.

How did they do this? How had they endured those months entombed in mud to make a phoenix type recovery... sort of!? We’ve all heard tales of this manner of miracle that I’ve assumed to be apocryphal, but it seems that cynicism isn’t always the best approach to the mysteries of old Mother Nature.

There’s no doubt that the Ukrainians are showing what bravery and resilience can achieve and their stoicism is mirrored in the pluck of my pond’s inhabitants. Never say die is an attitude that has served lives well over millennia whether we walk, swim or fly. Sometimes I personally wonder whatever I’m moaning about when I see what others are facing with such resolve.