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Message: <blockquote data-quote="halftwo" data-source="post: 1698010" data-attributes="member: 45720">Greys in GreyDusk.Snow now deflated to suds, foam washed up in tidelines against the hedges.Stubble sticking out from snow - heads of surfacing divers gasping for air, spaced amongst the cruel sea.Fourteen Grey partridge, colours washed out in low light,  place plodding feet against the treacherous push of slush - and sink belly-deep and high-step to repeat, while digging beaks for forage down to half-forgotten fields below.Snow along the lanes churned to tropic sand, soft-coloured, falsely inviting. Noises from the barn grow as I near - hundreds of Starlings - starvelings amongst steaming Fresians, searching through fodder in the troughs.Hundreds more in oak and ash, black coals spitting sparks of sound to stuff the air with bright staccato sounds.A switch flicked: as one they are silent instantly, then explode in a smokeball of wings, curling a smokescreen from the barn, and whoosh up and out. And from the trees the hundreds more form bait balls in the sky. Last to see in my turn, a female Sparrowhawk glides to the ash and halts, half-hidden instinctively from me. Starlings continue in organised panic; all else has gone. Two more steps and she's in full view - but knows and goes, from ash to oak. Groups regroup and return. Turn and re-land. A single Meadow pipit flits back to the stinking pool under the silage mound, a Pied wagtail undulates to the barn. Chaffinches resume picking out seeds from the putrid pile.Last light settles in the deep ditch - dark sheer banks hide the Snipe until it flies. Last flight of the day: it glides back beyond the bend, flicker-swerving to the tiny ribbon of bright water, out of sight.</blockquote>

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