Foxglove

OUR passing is not just to admire large cattle and small birds, but to check out tussock and bramble-patch for rabbits and rats. A dog surveys a cowpat covered in yellow flies, and I tell her not to even think about it.

Where you find cattle, you find flies, and where there are flies there are those who feed off them. Placid brown bovines accumulating beef lazed in marked contrast to the swifts that dived past us like fighter aircraft, timing their passing to the second and the hair's breadth. Their image stayed in our eyes after they had been and gone, for their passage was too fast for focusing the human eye. Swift indeed.

And then, among the black and buff delta wings flickered smaller fighter aircraft, not faster or more agile but taking every advantage of fitting through a smaller space.