One sunny late spring evening a narrow strip of fresh, luscious black Tarmac squeezed between two low, wide hedgerows plots my gently rising course to three imposing oaks on a ridge half a mile ahead. The warm air is filled with a reassuringly rural ring of birdsong, bleating livestock and the distant hum of a tractor at work. Hidden by the hawthorn hedge, a disturbance in the meadow demands attention. Seconds later a heron’s large grey wings claw at the air desperate to gain height. In its beak the spoils of a nest raid. A Lapwing circles behind in sceeching protest and widens its flightpath to issue a warning for me not to approach its nest.
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