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Message: <blockquote data-quote="halftwo" data-source="post: 1683871" data-attributes="member: 45720">Small GameEasterly clouds threatened further snow - and a partial overnight thaw, which had started with a hard frost, though ice and snowy patches remained. Slippy lanes and rocky mud contrasted in places with soft ooze, tugging at the welly.Fields busy: Fieldfares, Redwings and, in one, over a dozen Skylarks amongst the Lapwings and Meadow pipits. Buzzards had found the light wind, bitter and gentle, and sailed the sky, tacking away from Crows hard on their tails. Here and there, on perches rather than air, Kestrels sat watching. Down in a little valley, where cold air gathered, having slipped the slopes to settle in waste-deep pools of freeze, snow still clung to clumps of grasses and sedge, but the ditch was clear and liquid. In this windcalmed spot the soul hushes: my crunching step pushes Song thrushes from bushes and rushes. Then out along the ridge and hedge: suddenly bright Bullfinches in a trio bound and whistle, bouncing brilliantly along the thorn. A burst and whirr: a Grey partridge pair launch an arc over the line and loop to hide, overtaking the finches. A female pheasant swerves and sprints - a pale Fox through weeds, a fish through reeds.   Now a Hare jumps and runs across furrows, catching long legs on ridge-tops as it flees. Another, in the meadow's middle, crouches flat, ears back - their silvery linings edged like ice against a dun back. A third sits dog-like under the electric fence staring southward.Goldfinches from alders flash yellows and whites to glean fallen seed with Reed buntings and a dozen Linnets undulate above. Again the horizon fills with flushed birds - Lapwings way off bunch. A Peregrine, low against the grey horizon, and a mile off, gives a brief glimpse before passing the permanently-paused potato picker and is lost. But the best at very last: across the icy lane a blur of movement and a sinewy wriggle under the hedge - Stoat! No ermine coat despite the snow of late - full summer garb. It hears my boot crunch and stops to turn a quick stare before diving into the undergrowth, its black-ended tail swallowed into the hollow.</blockquote>

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