Ears to the ground

This year has been exceptional for growth in my part of the world. A cold dry spring was replaced by steady rain through May. It’s led to a thick crop of barley.

In places, the growth and the rain have been too much. Overnight deluges have flattened the spring-drilled crop almost entirely. They’ve smashed flattened patches into the autumn-sown fields. These puddles of laid barley are proving irresistible for Columba palumbus — the rapaciously hungry woodpigeon.

Bird-scarers of all sorts are no deterrent for a determined woodie on a ‘flightpond’ of flattened barley. Like teal on a great evening flight, they drop in from all angles and I’ve recently enjoyed one such afternoon.

Rise and fall

I’d been watching numbers rise and fall over the preceding 10 days.