In the open farm fields wildlife was adapting to an outbreak of symmetry. Ploughs and harrows had left their marks, a crisscross patchwork of parallel lines. Some fields had lightly furrowed brows, others deep gullies and humpbacked hills.
Pigeons flew overhead, flapping across from north to south, south to north, east to west and back, as if resetting their bearings.
In their short lives skylarks had seen it all before, the frequent transformations of their landscapes. A pair took off from the newly tilled bare earth, chasing in tandem, making mazy, quicksilver, patterns with their white tail feathers glinting against the soil, as if they were playing with sparklers.
One would throw out a loop and the other would hold to its slipstream. It lasted for only a few seconds until the birds dropped out of sight, the light going out as quickly as it had ignited. Here was a vignette of grace and agility, a party trick to add to the birds’ more famous song flight.
An ornithologist named RB Martin first recorded the chase when, during the second world war, he spent a year following a single skylark in the fields of Middlesex. Such frenetic pursuits may be linked to courtship. Or they may not.
It was mid afternoon and it became clear that we were on a starling highway. A flock came down to land a few fields off. Though the starlings looked like a dark swarm of bees, they had two inky blobs in their midst, for they had acquired a pair of crow interlopers.
Staying low, they were rolling like tank tracks, the birds at the back lifting, flying to the front and drawing the whole flock forwards. Silent in flight, they came to ground with a great susurration.
They rose again and made a body, swerving as one. The crows parted from their flexible host, lacking the telepathy or ability to keep up.
Another starling flock appeared from the same direction, half spilling on the ground, half lining up on telegraph wires. And then another, pouring out of nowhere, flying to who knows where.
