Country diary: A stone curlew glides into view like a mad little yacht | Nicola Chester

Inkpen, Berkshire: This goggle-eyed rarity is full of surprises, and when it stands up, it reveals anotherI am watching hares at rest in the growing wheat through my binoculars. One pulls its long, sundae-spoon ears through its paws to clean them. Another stretches like a dog, yawns and lies down, when something glides behind the harbour of its back like a yacht. There is no rise and fall in the movement of the body, with its short, cryptic, brown, black and white strokes. I blink and look away, refocus. There is a hare-like goggle-eye between wheat blades; a wild little sun with a small black planet dotted within. Pictures in field guides pop up like sleeping tabs in my brain: a stone-curlew. Two. Two stone-curlews.The first bird sails slowly back into view, the plimsoll line of a wing bar of white feathers aligned with the top of the young wheat. It stays straight as a spirit level as it cruises through the field. At a gap in the precision-drilled crop, it suddenly stands tall, and I realise that it has been travelling along in comedy subterfuge on bent knees, or hocks; these are the "thick knees" of its family name (Burhinus oedicnemus); it is not, in fact, a curlew. There is something else maritime about it; not just the smooth movement, or the white wing bar of fluttering bunting - its long yellow legs and its wader-short thick bill are in the same yachtsmen's welly yellow. It makes me smile. Continue reading...