halftwo
Wird Batcher
Into a crease of wooded land hidden in the fold of fields. Beech and birch, ash and oak, sweet chestnut and rowen: a secret haunt. And just above the meadow pocked with vole holes and patched in pink-purple with heathers, heathers thick with a dozen different insects busy and buzzing. Honeybees and hoverflies, wasps and bumbles, and flies by the score, sipping from scented blooms.
At the wood's edge a Spotted Flycatcher family perches on birches, the young still speckly but already adept. Juveniles follow adults from treetops to shrubs, and butter yellow Willow warblers forage around them.
A bunch of bright Bullfinches bob across the gap, calling softly. The chime of Siskins strikes from the sky. A Robin and a Nuthatch sit in an oak: a mismatched pair.
The day warms and four Buzzards circle up a thermal above the hill. Swallows sing. A Great-spotted woodpecker calls from the trees. The sun-started grasshoppers ratchet from the grass, where a Small copper tastes a fresh blade, turning to the sun.
Down to a ferny gully where the steam gurgles and splashes: a Wren with a maggot runs along the wall like a mouse. In a marshy field thick with sedge and thistle a hunting Common hawker skims blooms and dodges in dapples. Ghostly Large whites flap their sheets: tiny yachts tacking across the ocean of meadow.
Up on the reservoir Little grebes dive and House Martins' rumps blink white signals over the peat dark water and the clang of horses' hooves echo from the lane.
At the wood's edge a Spotted Flycatcher family perches on birches, the young still speckly but already adept. Juveniles follow adults from treetops to shrubs, and butter yellow Willow warblers forage around them.
A bunch of bright Bullfinches bob across the gap, calling softly. The chime of Siskins strikes from the sky. A Robin and a Nuthatch sit in an oak: a mismatched pair.
The day warms and four Buzzards circle up a thermal above the hill. Swallows sing. A Great-spotted woodpecker calls from the trees. The sun-started grasshoppers ratchet from the grass, where a Small copper tastes a fresh blade, turning to the sun.
Down to a ferny gully where the steam gurgles and splashes: a Wren with a maggot runs along the wall like a mouse. In a marshy field thick with sedge and thistle a hunting Common hawker skims blooms and dodges in dapples. Ghostly Large whites flap their sheets: tiny yachts tacking across the ocean of meadow.
Up on the reservoir Little grebes dive and House Martins' rumps blink white signals over the peat dark water and the clang of horses' hooves echo from the lane.
