Destruction.

I suppose I am entitled to rant sometimes, so here goes, my little patch of England in which I live is a very beautiful place but I have always harboured the feeling that the major landowner in these parts was about as enviromentally friendly as Agent Orange. Most of his hedgerows make Bilbo Baggins look like a friggin giant and there some almost prairie size fields which were obviously at one time much smaller with hedgerows etc . This was confirmed today when in conversation with another landowner who told me this guy had bulldozed hedgerows and filled in at least 5 ponds /pools. We all want to eat but surely farming comes with some sort of responsibilty to the land etc. It would also stop half the flooding in the village. The guy is a twat. Anyway the weather was terrible more like December rather than late April, driving rain , and a raw near gale force wind. So after an abortive attempt this morning in which the only hightlight was the brief sound of a singing WHITETHROAT And my contraction of trenchfoot due to my welligton splitting Willow and I made a second round of the patch late this afternoon. This proved a good idea as even in these conditions we still found some nice birds , well I found the birds ,Wilow just ran about The hedgerows were quite with just a single BLACKCAP, WILLOW WARBLER, 2 CHIFFCHAFF ,7 LINNET ,2 YELLOWHAMMER. Around the fields were a BUZZARD,2 RED LEGGED PARTRIDGE , 1 singing SKYLARK braved the conditions, 1 RAVEN was argueing with a local CROW. It was the top fields which again provided the best birds with 1 WHITE WAGTAIL, 5 YELLOW WAGTAIL (all males), along with 19 PIED WAGTAILS providing evidence of the continued passage of WAGTAILS this spring. There was also 3 male WHEATEAR one of which was a definite/probable Greenland type bird! .There was also 4 STOCK DOVE and a GREATER SPOTTED WOODPECKER with 3 SWALLOW OVER.At the end of the walk was a flock of 25 WOODPIGEONS ,maybe they are migrants ?