Having sprung

As I walked out in the drizzle at 06:00 this morning, I felt far from hopeful that my ramble would be long before being compelled to squelch back home. There were two horses in the field where there are usually three, and only two of the highland cattle remained in their straw-strewn barn. I wondered about the great slaughterhouse in the sky where long-furred, long-horned, teddy-bear coloured cows are painlessly transformed into steaks for people with above-average amounts of wealth. However, I discovered the rest of the herd in a field further on down the lane. Jessica, one of two sanctuary donkeys, poked her head out of a stable door, but the drizzle discouraged her from venturing further. A field sardined with ewes and their adolescent lambs bleated plaintively - whether about the rain, about their lot in life, or about the impending demise of the lambs, who knows? The free-range hens sounded disgruntled about being still locked up in their barn. The turkeys expressed indignation that no-one had come to let them out. I heard the goats moving about restlessly in their stall. Two dogs came to greet me.

The walk was punctuated with scurrying bunnies. Some of them looked awfully young. Last weekend there was a dog-sized hare that I watched run for over a mile. A grey squirrel fussed about in the leaves, probably looking for last year's beech mast. A red deer trotted purposely across a field and over into the wood. When I peered down the bank, the deer sprinted off amongst the trees, barking with alarm and annoyance. Another red deer, with horns for antlers, startled as I rounded a hedgerow, leapt high in the air over a fence and across a field of fluorescent-yellow oilseed rape.

Somebody twanged a ruler on the desk - I think it was a great spotted woodpecker. Later I watched another as it peered fixedly and obsessively for grubs dislodged by its hammering. Chiffchaffs, impossible to see and impossible to mistake, called from the tree tops. Blue tits, great tits, coal tits and long-tailed tits flittered. Chaffinches and greenfinches fluttered. House martins darted, and sand martins mobbed. Robins chirruped, and wrens piped their flutey trills. Skylarks busked above empty fields. A yellow-hammer was after some bread without cheese. Thrushes sang their hearts out, and blackbirds called out the news, sometimes about the bully magpies that coughed and choked their way around the woods. There were jackdaws and rooks, and suspicious-looking crows watching what was going on. Last week a kingfisher darted along Hett Burn. A sparrow hawk arrowed along a hedgerow. A mallard duck quacked noisily as it lofted out of a wood frequented by foxes. A pair of greylag geese, honking softly, flew formation circles over the old farm buildings. Wood pigeons and collared doves cooed from oak branches. A family of white doves circled the white dovecot, looking for all the world like an Athena poster. A heron flew lazily from one side of the sky to the other. And all the time in the hedgerows, the chatter and busyness of small brown birds of indeterminate kind.

There were banks of celandine and yellow primroses, and a scattering of cowslips. Beneath the hedgerows were purple violets. The woodland floor had been touched by the flame of the first bluebells.

It seemed that I was the only person alive in the springtime world.