FROST-LADEN air and glowing orange sun; it is dawn by the River Devon and the birds are wakening. A sandpiper flits onto a shingle island in the middle of the river and a dipper whirrs upstream; a chiffchaff – a small migrant warbler – utters his two-tone call from a willow thicket.

It might be April, but the mornings are still cold and the grass and plants by the bankside are coated with a silvery crust of frost. But the signs of the season of renewal are all around, cuckooflower is blooming by damp flushes, and ramsons (wild garlic) are on the verge of bursting into full glory.

Further downstream I spot a drake goosander displaying to a nearby female, throwing his head back in the passion of courting. There is a palpable excitement in the air; the bird song, the emerging flowers and the low morning sun – it’s spring and nature is quickening its pace.

In a nearby field that has recently been ploughed, rooks busily pick over the soil in search of invertebrates revealed by the toil of the tractor, and a cock pheasant scurries along by a far boundary fence. The sweet music from a song thrush drifts across from a stand of alders by the river bank, each phrase delivered twice, before going onto the next.

I hurry on my way, for I’ve just heard a blackcap singing in the distance, and I’m keen to get a glimpse of this little songbird that has just arrived from its wintering grounds in the Mediterranean. But my quest fails, for the blackcap is well hidden amongst the greenery of a rhodendron, and when I creep close, he suddenly falls silent.

But as I head back for home, he tunes up once more, a rich and fluty song that gradually fades with each passing step.

@BroomfieldKeith