Since moving to Scotland in 2013, I’ve seen more wildlife than the entire 45 years I lived in England.
Seriously. I’m not just making this up for the sake of fiction.
While out walking or driving in the
daytime, I’m regularly treated to the common garden birds and crows, but spread
some love in the form of oats and uneaten rice cakes, and the local woodpecker
comes knocking. Rabbits frolic on the lawn as mummy rabbit teaches them …
rabbity hops and cute nose twitches. There are the toads that can leap across the
entire road before we pass them at 45 miles an hour. And if you’re really lucky,
a red squirrel will scamper up a nearby tree – with a nut clamped in their jaws,
ear tufts swaying in the breeze.
Driving home late at night, a different
kind of clientele frequent the roads and pathways as if they’re challenging you
to a round of the retro 80s computer game about a boy on a push bike who’s thwarted
at every opportunity by cars, animals and bins as he tries to deliver his
newspapers in a sprawling metropolis.
There’s the lonesome owl that always
flies off the fence post as we approach, probably with a tut as we’ve just
scared off the mouse he’s been tracking for the past two minutes. And there are the deer who majestically leap over hedges and the road as if they have mini trampolines
attached to their hooves. And if that wasn’t startling enough, the badgers are
out for their midnight bimble - you could easily mistake them for a medium-sized
dog.
So next time you’re in the countryside in the day or night, look up and around – beyond the trees and tractors. You never know, you might encounter a sunbathing hare or a swooping bat after a cluster of bugs.
I can’t help feeling that we’re the
intruders on the road, not them. This is their kingdom and we’re merely
transient visitors who are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of their wild life.
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