Haws light way for the worm hunters

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire Maybe 50 buzzards were staring into the earth, charming worms up by the power of will

The stoplight red glass of the hawthorn berries shines with bright autumn days, morning rains and nights under the harvest moon. Now the haws are at their most dazzling though not yet edible, and the season is gold: gold-green, gold-yellow, gold-red, gold-brown.

But the mornings begin in fog, watched by the rooks around the Roman ruins of Viroconium, who hunch under their coats, sitting 80 together on electricity wires above the ancient Wroxeter city that seems to sink back under fields as their breath lifts.