A bit of hunter instinct

It was just a routine reconnaissance trip; I wasn’t expecting to see too much and simply hoped to find an outing for the next day. As I bounced down the farm track, the latte in my cup holder flying everywhere, I was looking for birds on an old, cultivated bean stubble. Looking through the hedge as I passed, I could see birds just breaking the skyline across the field. They were busily working away, picking up the old beans left behind — beans that had softened into a perfectly palatable condition after a few days of rain.

As I got to the larger second field, there were feeding birds all over it. In fact, there were birds everywhere, in reasonably big gangs — the sort of gangs you see as they are starting to flock for the winter. The