MOST of the barley has been cut, and the wheat is beginning to fall beneath the combine harvesters in the fierce sunshine. The barley stubble is yellowish, the wheat stubble a paler colour. Not so much grain is left scattered on the fields as there was in the days of the sheaves and stooks, but birds come looking for what they can find.
Pheasants come stalking into the fields, the cock birds with long, magnificent tails, the hens with more modest tails, and the young birds with quite short ones. Red-legged partridges can also venture into the stubble quite boldly, but grey partridges are more likely to emerge from under the hedges at dusk.
House sparrows, which are still quite common in much of the countryside, leave the gardens to feed at the edge of the cornfields. They make their headquarters in a hedge, and constantly flit down to the ground and back again.
Wild plants that the birds may also find among the stubble are the field pansy, or heartsease, which is a yellow flower with blue-tipped petals, and which produces many small seeds; and knotgrass, a very common plant with tiny pink flowers that can trail for a yard along the ground.
DJM