The Field

A large field near our house has been the home of a small herd of cows through the winter. They had a pretty hard time with the snow, and the farmer had considerable problems in bringing supplementary feed up when, in the heavy rain of a few weeks ago, the access track was largely washed away. Despite this, the animals seem....

....to have survived remarkably well, and we rather enjoy meeting the calves which now accompany their mothers.

However, in the last few days we have noticed some additional users of the field, a small flock of....

....redwings. I tend to think of redwings as arriving early in the winter to gorge on berries, particularly those of the ubiquitous rowan and of the sea buckthorn, of which there are large numbers along the coast path near Dunrobin Castle. However, this year the berries, despite looking like a good crop, disappeared very quickly, so the redwings seem to have taken instead to feeding in the cows' field, presumably on worms. 

The field is also being exploited by a close relative of the redwing, the song thrush. There appear to be a large number of these birds this year: we even have one in the trees at the front of our house, a bird which, like the others, seems to be working himself up into the crescendo of song which comes with the breeding season.