Hare Valley this afternoon.
It had pissed down over night, and on and off all day, so it was welly time.
The first hare got up and ran before we'd even made our way into the first field. And even prior to that, two huge raptors took off from the trees alongside the grassy drift down the hill. My automatic assumption was 'buzzards', but I looked again. I couldn't see the underwing pattern against the sky, and although they had the classic forked tails of kites, buzzards' tails can looked forked during some aerial manoeuvres. But they didn't fly like buzzards (they flapped steadily off towards the horizon, after one had done a quick circuit to take a look at us), their wings looked longer and narrower, and they were disarmingly quiet. Buzzards like to tell everyone all about it.
As did the young buzzard who took off from the first field as the hare belted off and we came into view. He (I'm assuming a young male, as he was tiny for a buzzard, and the boys are smaller than the girls) made a massive fuss, calling very loudly, settling in some trees and then changing his mind and finding himself a very elevated and exposed spot where he could hunch his wings and stare down at us. He wasn't impressed that we'd disturbed his search for worms, or voles, or whatever it was.
By the time we left the first field we'd seen four more hares; we then saw another five in the last field. Some of them could be seen on our approach, and the dogs informed me of their presence, but behaved impeccably. Batshit was less good about the half a dozen pheasant poults we came across on the way back. They were young and foolish travellers, not bright enough to see dogs and disappear into the thick cover behind them, and Batshit required a stern reminder that one can flush birds, but that is all. They scattered into the air and along the stream, and B&B had a good splash around trying to find them, but they'd gone.
All in all, a great wildlife afternoon. At one point I had a pheasant, two hares and two buzzards in sight all at once, which was rather good.
The ditches have so much water in them that they're running again, and the stream was fairly swirling along. The huge cracks in the soil are slowly closing as the clay swells, and the going underfoot feels appreciably softer. It was a lovely walk. As ever, I feel so lucky to have access to places like that.