Light rain is falling. The droplets patter on the grass and wildflowers, including bright yellow florets of tall ragwort and fading purple teasel globes and thistles. Looking more closely as I pass, I find slender, metallic red soldier beetles feeding on the nectar of the delicate flowers, and yellow and black hooped cinnabar moth caterpillars on the ragwort stems. There is less bird activity than earlier in the season – most birds are hiding as they moult or feed their young, and the time of birdsong is over – but there are still the whistles and seeps of chiffchaffs and tits calling as they move through the trees.
The rain stops, and I feel the sun’s warmth on my back. Almost immediately, butterflies appear and flutter across the dense vegetation by the path. A brown gatekeeper butterfly, with orange patches and double white spots on the black “eye” on its upper front wing, basks with open wings on the leaves of a bramble. A flock of starlings, many of them recently fledged, lighter brown youngsters, suddenly fly up from hiding in the long grass and settle on the bare branches of a dead tree.
I walk to a gate to look out across the brooks. Lapwings are sitting on the grass, nervously calling to each other before they take off, squealing in alarm. I hear the raven before I see it – the deep, guttural “fronk-fronk” calls give it away. I follow the sound, scanning the sky. Sure enough, I pick up the large, black corvid – larger than a buzzard – leisurely flapping its broad wings with splayed primary feather tips. It flies towards me and circles overhead, as if to take a closer look at me.
Then another raven calls – its voice is slightly higher-pitched, more insistent – possibly a young bird. They circle each other and gain height, the two birds turning slowly together, rising in a thermal, like black propeller blades.
Over the brooks, smart black and white house martins, and brown and cream sand martins are flying over the pools of water, chattering noisily to each other. I watch as they zoom low, snatch at the flies, then climb and turn, feeding up before they head south.
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