Too silent.
I was just thinking of complaining out loud to Sniff that there was no wildlife to be seen - what was the world coming to when, abroad in the wilds, there is nothing wild to be seen - when a hare ran out of the woods, across our path and into the field on our left, its enormous feet pounding down on the young seedlings as it jagged across the earth. Immediately, another sprang up from a hidden runnel and chased the other hare across the field, heading for shelter, escaping the strange two-legged monster and the white and brown beast-thing which could be dangerous. (Hardly. Sniff completely ignored them and tootled along as per usual, sniffing away. Not exactly living up to terrier status).
Only a couple of minutes later and I hear a cuckoo calling from the trees on our right. Then another. Two cuckoos, their calls similar but nevertheless distinct. After which a lapwing's cry peals out from the middle of the crop followed by the bird itself, rising into the air out of the field, flying straight over our heads, away into the blue.
Further down the track and silence reigns again. In the distance some cows munch away at the grass, placid and calm, despite a sign warning that "Cows with calves can be dangerous." Another sign beseeches me to keep my dog under control. Sniff ignores the sign and crawls under the fence into the field containing said dangerous cows in order to sniff a particularly interesting tussock. The cows, far away, fail to stampede us en masse, but continue to chew away and to whisk their tails from side to side, blinking slow blinks.
I keep hoping for an adder to slither past. Or for some skylarks to do their scribbling in the sky as Henry Williamson describes so well. Or for a hedgehog. Please let there be a hedgehog. But for the rest of the walk the only excitement is a pair of wood pigeons - and they are so ubiquitous these days as to be a pest. In fact, early last Summer they ate all the gooseberries on my garden bushes. This year I've learned my lesson and have covered said bushes with netting. (All of which reminds me of a book I'd like to share: here's a man with an appropriate name....)
Back to the walk. Obviously the sound (not the sight) of cuckoos is going to be deemed enough excitement for one day. Too much nature would be, these days, unnatural. Here I am in the countryside with nary a human in sight - no cars, no tractors, no noise, no nearby roads. Just a man and his dog. Alone.
Where are the beasts and the fowl? Where the reptiles? Where, even, the worms?
It is rather depressing. We turn back towards the car and, for the next forty minutes, see nothing at all. Not even a wood pigeon. It's hardly the stuff of a Gerald Durrell book.
But I'll keep looking. Looking, looking....
