Country diary: An alien landscape that is slowly vanishing

‘An eerie gathering of long-dead oak trees.’ Photograph: Alexandra Pearce-Broomhead

By the church, a covey of partridges bustles about in the pasture, warming themselves in the golden sunshine. The morning air is tinged with the sweetness of manure, and from an adjacent field comes the hum of farm machinery. Gulls and corvids swarm above, rucking in the sky as a tractor churns the soil, exposing invertebrates to the baying crowd.