Skylarks’ chase casts shimmer on the soil

Sandy Bedfordshire Two skylarks took off, their feathers glinting against the tilled earth as if they were playing with sparklers

In the open farm fields wildlife was adapting to an outbreak of symmetry. Ploughs and harrows had left their marks, a crisscross patchwork of parallel lines. Some fields had lightly furrowed brows, others deep gullies and humpbacked hills.

Pigeons flew overhead, flapping across from north to south, south to north, east to west and back, as if resetting their bearings.