Country diary: A stonechat watches the kerfuffle in silence

Sandy, Bedfordshire: The voice of the uplands fidgets while the crows and chaffinches fuss A cast of hundreds has descended on the farm fields in midwinter. Out in the winter wheat, a rowdy assortment of crows behave like gatecrashers at a party where the booze has already run out. Trampling their restlessness over the first leaves of grass, cawing and wing-flapping, they claw at chilled soil where frost-averse invertebrates are dead, dormant or deep below. The crows don't stay long.The hedge alongside is bare of berries and bursting with birds. Bush to bush, twig to twig, a flock of chaffinches is whipped along by "pink pink" exclamations, and their speed-foraging seems too fast for them to glean anything worthwhile out of split-second pauses. Some spill out over the ground beside, and pick over earth that has been picked over by innumerable beaks before. Within seconds, the whole band - maybe 50-strong - has abandoned cover and struck out across the fields. Continue reading...