Country diary: starlings dot the lighthouse roof like currants on a bun

St Mary's Island, Northumberland Children with fluorescent nets peer into plastic buckets; their cries of excitement echoed by the piping of seabirds

Heading south on the coastal path, we leave Old Hartley village, drawn magnetically by St Mary's Island with its tall white lighthouse. The sea is a muted grey, with two vast container ships at rest near its meeting with a paler sky.

The footpath skirts a tufty hillock where a kestrel hovers over rough grass, fenced off from the path by chestnut paling. I catch the medicinal scent of mugwort, its glaucous leaves curling and turning winter brown. The scrubby clifftops are a tangle of rose briars and brambles, safe thickets for stonechat and wren. Amongst the windblown tussocks are seedheads of wild carrot, yarrow and knapweed, with late flowers of red clover.