The hare isn’t the only creature I encounter. There are rabbits, roe deer, munjac, buzzards, squirrels, water fowl and a wide variety of other avians. Certainly the most vociferous of these is the green woodpecker. There must be scores of them living in the countryside around the village. They are easily startled and their warning cry is both loud and distinctive, while their ‘bounding’ flight make them easily recognisable. Of course, the wood pidgeon and various members of the crow family make up the greater percentage of the bird population while the most tuneful are, without a doubt, our skylarks. Just a hundred or so metres to the south east of the main village street is a large meadow. This field has lain fallow for at least twenty years and is home to scores of skylarks. They can be heard from February until November and make for a melodic and joyous contrast to the traffic noise on the A143 that runs alongside.
The coronavirus lockdown period throughout the spring of 2020 was made bearable by these morning excursions into the countryside. There were no aircraft condensation trails in the sky, traffic noise was almost absent, visibility was significantly improved and there were no wildlife corpses at the roadsides. In the fields and hedgerows nature was busy. It’s not as if sitings of wildlife during my early morning walks was a rare occurence in the days prior to covid 19 – they weren’t, but they became far more commonplace by the start of May 2020. The vast majority of the images you will find here were taken after the 20th April. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I have enjoyed capturing them.
