WITH the rapidly growing cereal crops in the fields making a thick green curtain, pheasants are having a good time looking for insects and other food.
The other morning the only way you could spot them was by looking for their red eye patches. It was as though there were lots of disembodied heads moving about the fields.
Now in their brightest mating plumage, the pheasant cocks are presenting brilliant scarlet heads. It made them easy to spot.

Also making a colourful addition to the morning was a charm of goldfinches near to New Hill House Farm, dashing for cover into the hedgerow.
Hardly colourful but no less impressive was an oystercatcher flying over the fields in Lord Sefton Way, its beautiful black-and-white plumage presenting a striking zig-zag pattern as it passed over the fields.
And I spotted my first pair of swallows yesterday.
Music on the moss: The first Tim Buckley record I bought was Lorca, his first real expedition into jazz. It's an uncompromising record that sees Buckley using his voice as an instrument more than anything else, stretching words into syllables of sound rather than normal verses. The brilliant Lee Underwood backs him on guitar and pipe organ.

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