Winged sisters bound through the cool hazy sky

Shropshire Hills A vocal flock of linnets add their song to a spring day on the common

A choir of birds flew over Clee Liberty. Their voices sharply urgent, excited. Once perched in a tree all facing north, they fell silent. Apart from a bounding flight and ardent voices, their distinguishing marks were dark streaks that fell across their bodies like the shadows reaching across fields from great oaks in the valley below.

The birds were female linnets, I think, birds that Aristotle could not identify but called Acanthis, after a woman in Greek mythology turned into a bird. Her father's starving horses attacked and ate her brother Anthus, so Zeus turned the sisters into birds so they would not starve. They could forever feed on seeds of the fields and moors: finch-faced sisters, Acanthis their scientific name.