Country diary: On the bluest of days, the plaintive call of a pipit

A meadow pipit on Combs Moss. ‘They were once a default species on every moor.’ Photograph: Mark Cocker

The morning was sunlit and the sky the sort of deepest blue dome that makes your heart sing – and all the louder for being at the time of least natural sound.

Autumn is the most silent season for birds, but at least I could hear the passing meadow pipits more clearly as they came out of the blue in small numbers and crossed overhead on migration. There is something inherently melancholic about their plaintive piping calls, which seem at one with the mood of upland treeless places.