Good morning

My goodness but it is busy out there this morning; the crows are playing kites on the breeze, those that aren't on look out, patrolling for buzzards. The swallows are massing for circles and bumps along the field and the playfull ones are doing figures of eight around the garden and the adjacent ancient tree in the field, doing quick ups and downs over the garden fence that cuts into their route.

The sparrows have to check in with flight control before they make a swoop from the house roof to the neighbouring bird table, to avoid the house martins' gossiping visits to each other's nests/desireable residences under my eaves. Gold finches aim at dandylion clocks, hitting the stalks at just the right degree to bend them slightly, so they can slide down to feed on the seeds, the silky parachutes released into the breeze seedless. Blackbirds chase everything they think might have found something to eat they didn't see first. The robin flits from one arm of the rotary laundry dryer to the other, a useful perch for sighting food.

I was up early this morning, so I was in time to see the stately progress along the top field of the deer, up to their arm (leg) pits in the swaying grass of the field being left for hay making; tall field buttercups brushing their bellies with pollen, not that I can see those particles of colour through the binoculars.

Later in the season when the grasses are cut, dried and harvested, foxes will come out at dusk scouting for succulent slugs in the short rough cut stands. Another detail I could not verify through the binoculars but by deduction I could not imagine what else they would be so greedily scooping up. With the last filaments of the setting sun on their rusty backs, they stood out in the silent field and the neighbours came out to lean on their fences and marvel.

This morning, people are beginning to join in the world now, with their dogs, cars, laundry and gardening tools, so those eternal residents, living here before our time began, are retreating to the further corners, away from our settlements, footpaths and busyness.