Eight Buff Orpingtons hatched after incubation at my neighbour’s home last week and it was exciting and appropriate to record their arrival. Tiny beaks chipped rough circles about the egg tops, before tiny armlike wings began the extraordinarily hard work of levering chick from its redundant shell. Each hatchling took around twenty minutes to emerge, resting every few minutes to recover from the exhausting effort.
Soon after dawn the rising tide crept in and lifted the Egg from its muddy berth. Overhead the sky had a wet greyness that soon began to splash light rain onto the water surface and disturbed the reflected blackthorn, bare on branch. On these changing marshy margins, the birds of both land and sea began to call and sing. From the threshold of the Egg’s eastern facing door, I grasped a fleeting two minutes and forty seven seconds of the mise-en-scène.
Yet another storm from the south west appeared to be gathering from around eight this morning, but the Egg rides the waves well in its sheltered bay. High spring tides can almost clear the protecting embankment however (as can be seen from the layered flotsam close to its top) and the Egg is more exposed to wintry broadsides that etch its cedar walls.
High water is due to top the predicted 3.9m tonight, due to the continuing southwesterly gales and the Environment Agency has issued a flood alert and indicative map. The inundation would be directly across the river as well as east toward Lepe, rather than across the somewhat higher marsh around my own protected nook.
Environment Agency flood alert map, issued on January 2nd at 17.03
A salute of hailstones welcomed the dawn of Christmas Day just after 8am. I was surprised by the unusual swishing noise from sheets of hail hitting water, as a wintry squall sped toward me across the river from a soaking Beaulieu. I took shelter in time to record the reverberations as they struck the Egg’s shell.
By eleven the moon was sufficiently high for its cool beams to wash through my circular skylight and to transit across the bed. As the night progressed I was bathed in, and scanned by, its glow as I slept.
As the days have got shorter, I have been sleeping a lot longer. The lack of light entails cooking in the embers of the day at around 3.45, being in bed by 4.30 and then sleeping until dawn. I normally have about six hours sleep and I have been averaging thirteen hours for the last two weeks each night in the Egg. I feel finely tuned in to the circadian rhythms of moon and its tides, the shortening day and to the wider weekly, seasonal and annual rhythms of this particular place.
Night of the full moon, Sunday 17th November, looking toward the Isle of Wight. 100% cloud.
Predicted wild weather met the Egg this week. According to the Met Office, south westerly winds gusted at up to 99mph over the Needles Old Battery on the Isle of Wight, just across the Solent. Alex Fogarty, who works for Wightlink Ferries, said: “We had probably the hairiest night since I’ve worked for Wightlink… At about five o’clock this morning we had the full force 11 gusting hurricane-force winds.”*
My namesake JMW Turner, told how he was strapped to the mast of a ship to better experience such a storm, but I had to make do with two live webcams, as I am currently spending a few days on leave.
The Egg is only afloat for about five hours in twenty four and this, combined with an aerodynamic shape, very sheltered position and secure mooring (though I may need another rope along the dotted line below) allowed it to comfortably ride out the storm.
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/uk-england-hampshire-24700370 >
The Exbury Egg 