Country diary: The skies here are busy with satellites and fieldfares | Rchard Smyth

Prendwick, Northumberland: On a crisp, cold walk, I'm reminded that winter still clings on, and that familiar constellations are far from aloneThe red sun rising over the radar station on Alnwick Moor picks out the tall shape of a hare at our end of the meadow. It lopes forward a little way - forever appearing, as hares always do, to be on the brink of a forward roll - and then pauses, sits up and shakes the dew from its front paws.A nearby pheasant lets rip a choked cock-crow. Both of these animals are game, here in England (as is the red-legged partridge, toiling tortoise-like through the weeds at the meadow bottom). Continue reading...