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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Richard Smyth

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

The sky at night … near Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland.
The sky at night … near Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland. Photograph: Wil Cheung/Twice Brewed Inn Hexham

The 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).

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