Ilkley Baptist

I'm gradually returning to cycling after the dark days of winter. Cycling along my usual route to Beamsley today, I heard and saw my first curlew of the day. It teased me at first. I thought it was a curlew, but it was only two notes of song, and could have been a lapwing. Then a longer note as well, but indistinct. Finally the full song and the bird sliding overhead. Very welcome.

I also passed a buzzard, a first for me on this road.

February was the driest month, at 0.85 inches, since May last year.

Fool! It wasn't Mercury, it was Jupiter. Oh well, I can still look for Mercury another time.

Meanwhile, today, in Bradford, in the wintry cold, I saw a blackcap, and heard its merry song, on a tree near the ChinoThai place.

On Tuesday afternoon, about 4.30pm, while driving down the A65 past Addingham, I saw Venus over the moor, intensely bright, and below and to the right of it, a smaller light, which was Mercury. I've never seen it before. I believe it will get closer to Venus over the next few weeks.

Opus 34 is the Piano Quintet, and I fulfilled a long-held ambition recently, when I played two of its movements as part of a chamber music group, this week.

Playing the piano is an immediately satisfying thing - you produce the whole piece of music yourself. But it's lonely. You generally make music alone. I've long wanted to play with other musicians and, through the kindness of a friend, was recently introduced to a group of local amateur musicians. The pianist was happy to move over for two of the movements and let me have my first go at doing this sort of thing. It was wonderful. Exciting, challenging, tense and joyful all at once.

And what a piece to start with! Brahms' Piano Quintet is a piece I've known since my teens. It's one of Brahms' unruly early works that, like the First Piano Concerto, didn't easily find its best form. It is a powerful, complex and rich piece. I played for the two inner movements, the slow second, and the driving Scherzo. That's an incredibly exciting movement, with relentless rhythms breaking into emphatic march-like tunes, and a middle section (Trio I suppose, though it's not in triple time) that contains one of those typically Brahmsian broad tunes. Mellowness multiplied.

Yesterday I saw a flock of waxwings in Addingham. I was walking beside the river Wharfe, near the suspension bridge that takes you across to Nessfield. It's the first time I've seen waxwings. They are immediately recognisable birds, very attractive, quite tame, and filled the trees with sounds reminiscent of electronic phone ring tones.

They're a new species for me, bringing my lamentable total to 128. Nine of those were added this year, though, so it's a growing list.

They have also inspired me, after all this time, to restart this blog. Over the months of silence, the things that have made me think about adding a post have mainly been matters to do with natural history: the weather, the moss on the moor, birds and insects. So perhaps I need to think again about the purpose of this blog.