halftwo
Wird Batcher
Bright early morning skies and a low sun just glimpsed as it tilted over stone walls, dew still glinting by the path. Birds busy with their young, Swallows swooping and snapping as they passed. A gate and trough held several young Crows, lining up to be fed, as a Lapwing, tirelessly and uselessly tried to drive them away from its own chick in the grass below.
Up along a ridge where the land rolled away - fields and woods hardly fading in the clear distances. Here a bank faced the morning sun, its profusion and variety pushing, crowding the wall above. Ox-eye daisies and hogweeds in whites, red poppies bending, thrusting thistles, brambles and cleavers scrambling for supremacy, blousy trumpets of convolvulus over purple vetches, grasses and clovers: the riot silently deafening. And amongst this the clouds of butterflies and beetles and flies.
Along the lane House Martins shuttled to the colony with their aerial gleanings, perching on the mud bowls of their nests to push gobs of flies down hungry throats.
A Green woodpecker powered past, tilted upward as if straining for height, the lime of its rump undulating steadily and its wings working heavily.
A flowery field slips downslope from the path, Small skippers chasing amongst the tall grasses, new trees choking under the squeeze of summer's growth: peace warms itself; Large whites flap and flop to frothy umbels and creamy brambles.
Then, from the shade of a hedge side ash, hidden by their stillness the screams of four young Kestrels whinny across the land. An adult has just sailed in with a vole and one of the youngsters has grabbed it and flown to a nearby branch away from its siblings still sitting cryptically - stubby branch-coloured birds - waiting their turn.
On the hill top the breeze brushes barley into waves - a green sea shifting above the old quarry. The stillness of the morning begins to break and the air quickens.
Up along a ridge where the land rolled away - fields and woods hardly fading in the clear distances. Here a bank faced the morning sun, its profusion and variety pushing, crowding the wall above. Ox-eye daisies and hogweeds in whites, red poppies bending, thrusting thistles, brambles and cleavers scrambling for supremacy, blousy trumpets of convolvulus over purple vetches, grasses and clovers: the riot silently deafening. And amongst this the clouds of butterflies and beetles and flies.
Along the lane House Martins shuttled to the colony with their aerial gleanings, perching on the mud bowls of their nests to push gobs of flies down hungry throats.
A Green woodpecker powered past, tilted upward as if straining for height, the lime of its rump undulating steadily and its wings working heavily.
A flowery field slips downslope from the path, Small skippers chasing amongst the tall grasses, new trees choking under the squeeze of summer's growth: peace warms itself; Large whites flap and flop to frothy umbels and creamy brambles.
Then, from the shade of a hedge side ash, hidden by their stillness the screams of four young Kestrels whinny across the land. An adult has just sailed in with a vole and one of the youngsters has grabbed it and flown to a nearby branch away from its siblings still sitting cryptically - stubby branch-coloured birds - waiting their turn.
On the hill top the breeze brushes barley into waves - a green sea shifting above the old quarry. The stillness of the morning begins to break and the air quickens.