Stillness is as near as we can get to a cloak of invisibility and there’s no great call for rapid movement in a hammock. The life I had briefly disturbed as I climbed aboard reconstituted itself all around me. And buzzed.

Sometimes very close. Sometimes with more than one buzzer. I’m not bad at telling one species of bird from another with my eyes closed: can you do the same with bees, wasps and flies? I fancied that the deeper thrum was a queen bumblebee, gathering pollen for her new brood of grubs. And that lighter, less intense buzz: was that domestic honeybee?

The notes of each individual buzzer changed as I listened: was that a change in the intensity of their wing-beat or the Doppler effect? Maybe a bit of both. The air of spring was buzzing all around me and I opened my eyes to look for the buzzers. Instead I saw a big bird flying directly overhead, flaplessly riding a thermal. And this was of course a buzzard. Why buzzard? Buzzards never buzz.

I looked it up when my labours in the hammock were at an end. The word comes from the Old French busard, buson or busard, and it was used for any hawk that was no good for the sport of falconry. The three letters at the end are derogatory, as in bastard, drunkard, dullard and coward.

The Old French word comes from the Latin buteo; the buzzard’s scientific name is Buteo buteo. A blithe note suggested this was onomatopoeic. Really? I may be a dullard but I’ve never heard a buzzard go boot or bute or boose or buss or even buzz. Buzzards mewl and yowl.

There’s an old English name gled, which I rather like. It means glider, and blizzards are superb at the craft of unpowered flight. They keep their wings dead still. They don’t buzz, even a bit.