At Blackwater Pond, Provincetown, USA on 8th December 2021 in the morning – by Eleanor McDowall

“Beech Forest seems entirely silent until I stand still. I’m at the edge of Blackwater Pond, surrounded by bare winter trees, when I start to hear the wingbeats overhead. Tiny birds, their wings striped in black and white, flit from tree to tree. They get closer and closer until one of them is about a foot from my microphone. There are no people in sight but the dry, December undergrowth is moving – rustling and shuddering as squirrels dart between the branches. Behind me on the surface of the pond, wild geese glide silently across the surface.”