Dawn observed

Left the house in darkness at 6.05: four red lights still glowed brightly on the TV tower at Emley and from one or two houses curtains were illuminated where early risers were welcoming (perhaps) the new day. Some tweeting bird sounds but nothing you could call song and nothing I could recognise.

Walking through the edge of the village I heard different bird calls again nothing I recognised until I thought I heard a Tawny Owl as I reached the Cross Roads. Looking back I realised there were five lights on the Emley Tower.

Reached the pond at 6.19: the eastern sky was bright..no street lights here but I could still see well enough to write in my notebook.The pond was rippled by a stiff breeze off the moor but as far as I could see there was no bird life swimming just then. A distant wood pigeon was early with its song, the pond geese were huddled by a far fence, the mallard invisible to the naked eye mainly on grass and the dark shape of a Moorhen strutting its stuff in the semi light of pre dawn.

The whole eastern sky is brightening: overhead the half moon still shines dimly through thin high cloud and a different set of birds are tweetering.

As I leave the pond behind the mallard are wandering up the field towards the new horse shelter and they seem to be arguing about something but silently.

The farms are all silent. Beyond Ash Grains it is possible to look back and see occasional car lights on the the Slathwaite Road and more threading through woodland in the direction of Honley Woods. On Castle Hill the light still beams out from the Victoria Tower but the Emley Tower lights are all but dimmed out by the growing light of dawn. In the fields the cattle have still not stirred from the place of their overnight rest.

Top Gate at 6.37:can hear the odd sound of a chicken "gargling". The wind is at my back from the moor as I look out over Meltham. I half suspect it is going to rain...do I go straight back as the village wakens for breakfast or on another hour to complete the circuit. The hunger pangs win out...another time breakfast first.....one over ripe banana is not enough to face the day on.

6.42 No pink tinge now but shades of grey and blue as if the sky has been colourwashed with the dregs of the washings of watercolour painting . At Ash Grains a small white and ginger cat (should I say kitten) peers round the end of a wall and comes out to investigate.

6..48 and the Emley skyline lights up in pink and then sunrise, the merest slither of brilliance rapidly becomes a segment and the pinkness fades....it may still be there I suppose but it is far outshone by the rising sun now half up and not comfortable to look at. There is retinal imaging in my sight as I look away from it.
6.50 the sun is more up than down and the tweets of birds grow, can hardly call it a chorus in the musical sense...
6.51 and the sun is almost clear of its hilly horizon
6.52 it breaks free : Sunrise all over in three minutes..about as quick as sun set.
On the way back down the geese are stirring, the mallard are headingfor the pond, a moorhen heads back from somewhere near the new horse shelter(not seen one so far from the water before) a dog behind me howls unwelcome to the day, a crow flaps into trees beyond the pond and there are Mallard ont he water. After the cross roads I hear the tut tut tutting of a robin and an unseen blackbird alarm calls somewhere in the trees.

The sun is swallowed by cloud, a youth walks his dog and the milk truck rattles past . A collared dove looks down from wires above some laurels and the chorus of bird calls grows in volume if not in melody. A flock of sparrows dives into some shrubs and a flight of starlings passes low over rooftops.

At 7.15 the sun breaks through sending out the first long shadows of the day...mine reaches out along the road behind me...reminds me of the long man of Wilmington
only he had a stick!

A paper boy trudges on his round, a white goods delivery lorry mimics the squawking of a crow as it backs, its driver having missed the narrowness of Matthew Lane as he searched for it from Mill Moor...couldn't believe the Sat Nav?.

7.22 At the house the milk has been delivered, there are collared doves and a coal tit on the feeders and another day is underway as I add fifty grams of cereal to a bowl and turn towards the fridge for the milk.