Country diary: a woodland walk to the dawn chorus

Wiggonholt Common, West Sussex: The nuthatch hops around, searching the ground, before launching high into a tree above me, where it starts to singDawn passes barely perceptibly in the damp darkness of the wood. Rain is falling, dripping through the canopy, forming thin, cold cascades of droplets pattering on the mud below. I turn a corner and stop – a nuthatch is drinking from a pool on the track, raising its pointed bill to gulp down the water. With its black eye-stripe, blue-grey back a