Meadowland (32 page)

Of course, my contradictory feelings towards foxes are a national tic. No other animal has been so strenuously exterminated or so earnestly anthropomorphized – and frequently as Reynard, the name coming originally from a twelfth-century Latin poem in which Reinardus torments his dim lupine uncle, Ysengrimus. He appears in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1390
Nun’s Priest’s Tale
as Rossel and fully fledged as Reynard in William Caxton’s
History of Reynard the Fox
published in 1481. Systematic hunting of the ingenious loner,
Vulpes vulpes
, began similarly early; Edward I had royal fox hunters during the thirteenth century. Killing of foxes was not restricted to hunting with dogs; under the Tudor Vermin Acts the head of a fox had a bounty of one shilling, and no one was fussy how Reynard was killed. According to the animal historian Roger Lovegrove in his book
Silent Fields
, the ancient countryside of Britain, including these Welsh Marches, is where fox hunting was most energetically pursued.

All the green, billiard-table smoothness of the meadow is gone; two days of hoar frost have left the grass pallid and listless. A moment of beauty is given by raindrops on the sedge heads glistening like rubies and emeralds in a Rider Haggard story. The hedges and trees in the copse are skeletons of their former selves. The buzzards greet the dawn, the jackdaws close the day.

14 D
ECEMBER
My daughter’s school carol service, in Hereford Cathedral: the first part of the service is held in the dark, save for a ring of isolated candles hanging above the middle of the transept. Later that night, I go down to the field, and stand there in the vertiginous dark, with the lights of the stars above me. The mountains make for high walls, the stars for candles. There is no difference between the cathedral and the field.

I rage against the coming of artificial light. To stand in an immense starred night is to be a citizen of the universe. To see its immensity. Stars made Australopithecus gaze up in wonder and dream. London has not seen the stars since the Blitz.

The next afternoon, a cheery troupe of starlings
travels over from the village. They are bright with their winter plumage, which itself is a stars-in-the-night design.

16 D
ECEMBER
The field underground: I’m digging out a hole for a fence post after a drizzle that has helpfully defrosted the land. I find digging into the meadow intoxicating, the way it reveals the meadow’s hidden underself.

There is a surprising amount of life in the bottom of a tussock: a C-shaped cockchafer grub, a wolf spider, minute club-headed yellow fungi, the pupae of butterflies, then as the spade goes in you can see all the workings of the worms, each an organic plough pulling leaf matter down, composting, constantly sending casts to the surface. The workings go down 40cm or so, deeper even than the swollen roots of the dandelion. Sap rises in the spring; the goodness of plants sinks into the roots in winter.

A heavy Sunday afternoon with an unmoving off-grey sky, a chainsaw gnawing away far upstream. Edith and I take a turn around the field, around the edge. As we near the newt ditch Edith puts up a snipe, which zigzags off.

Back in the house, I look through my diary and write down all the birds I have seen in the field this year. First, those on the ground or in the hedges and trees:

snipe, song thrush, blackbird, chaffinch, robin, buzzard, bullfinch, raven, magpie, skylark, curlew, wood pigeon, goldfinch, rook, pied wagtail, common partridge, nuthatch, spotted flycatcher, chiffchaff, blackcap, greater spotted woodpecker, green woodpecker, wren, long-tailed tit, redwing, fieldfare, meadow pipit, house sparrow, jackdaw, mallard, yellow wagtail, carrion crow, blue tit, great tit, lapwing, heron, house sparrow, tawny owl, barn owl, little owl, yellowhammer, starlings.

Flying above or alongside: red kite, kestrel, mandarin duck, heron, canada goose, swift, swallow, house martin, merganser, kingfisher, sparrowhawk, great crested grebe, dipper.

There are two more species overall than last year, though there are a couple of conspicuous absentees: tree sparrow and brambling.

In the mood for lists, I also collate all the flowers in the meadow: cuckoo flower, pignut, yellow rattle, meadow vetchling, tormentil, bird’s-foot trefoil, bugle, meadow saxifrage, devil’s bit scabious, eyebright, white
daisies, red clover, white clover, bluebells, lords and ladies, red campion, yarrow, dandelions, yellow archangel, foxgloves, camomile, thistles, stick mouse-ear, ragged robin, ground ivy, cleavers, wood anemone, dog’s mercury, stitchwort, dock, cow parsley, hogweed, cowslip, primrose, wild roses, honeysuckle, bush vetch, ribwort plantain, hairy bittercress, rough hawkbit, common meadow rue, nettles, meadow cranesbill, autumn hawkbit.

17 D
ECEMBER
Through the field blows a relentless wind. Now the foliage has died back or been torn away, smaller birds are more visible. In the lichen-encrusted apple trees in Bank Field a tiny treecreeper ascends, pecking with its beak, which is decurved like the curlew’s.

A fast-darkening day, and a badger appears by the copse. Almost instantly three travelling carrion crows mob it, and it disappears. When I go over, I see that the badger has dragged some uncollected hay towards the fence, presumably for bedding. This is ambitious, since the sett is hundreds of yards away. But clearly life goes on in the sett, as it has done for countless years past.

19 D
ECEMBER
One of those curiously mild, almost spring days that December can throw up. In the morning the entire field is woven with spider webs, so much so that the low sun reflecting off them is blinding, like moonlight lying on the sea. The air fills with drifting gossamer strands, each carrying a juvenile spider leaving home.

23 D
ECEMBER
It is getting towards prime mating time for the foxes, and the night is alive with barking. Foxes have a wide range of vocalizations, though they mainly ‘yip’ in a staccato style or bark ‘woo-woo’. They also emit a ‘waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ howl to raise the hairs on the neck.

I walk down to the field in the moonlight. Now I can hear another fox sound: ‘gekkering’. This is a clicky chattering interspersed with squeaks, more parrot than dog. It is used in aggressive encounters. The noise is coming from the river, and is discernible even above the background babble. My advance across the field is hardly silent: two days of rain have left the clay sodden and this has now frozen. The moon’s rays pick out flickering diamonds in the grass. Peering over
the bankside fence I can see the silhouettes of two foxes either side of the river, eight feet apart. Red foxes are highly territorial. I skirt out into the promontory and around. They are so preoccupied, and my loud advance sufficiently confused by water noise, that I get to within ten feet, and the fox on the shingle across the Escley is perfectly illuminated; I can see the breath from his snarling mouth, the flatness of his ears.