A morning ramble down the track past the waving willows. Olive boots roughing against gravel, grey and toffee brown. The midline green studded with white stars with pink trim and yellow hearts. The junction with the lane marked by loss of crunch underfoot, as the surface gives way to smooth blacktop. Ears trumpeting the call of the stonechats, clicking and tapping through the rushes and briars of the soaked peaty field. Warnings to their nestlings or distracting the dogs. Round and back along the thorn boundary hedge, a-chirp and a-cheep with the tiniest bundles, their pertly cocked tails, and orange rimmed beaks in wide yawns. A family of wrens on lunch break in flight school. And down in the jungle of swaying reeds, another small white flecked unnamed bird is caught by the wild wind and lifted away.
In fifteen years this remote outcrop has grown cover and safety and shelter from hoar frost and hawk, and berries a-plenty for an abundance of beaks. Humbling to get such joy in return.