RICHARD WILLIAMSON Nature Trails November 18

As the Shire horses of those days strained against their collars – these sometimes damaged and with loose straw wisps sticking out – and as their breath burst from wide-stretched nostrils in tiny white puffs in the winter air, large flocks of finches would arise around them and the thin old ploughman struggling to hold the plough shares straight.

As a small boy I would be as fascinated by the scene as I tried to determine what all the birds were.

Thirty yellowhammers, several hundred linnets, a thousand chaffinches or more, tree sparrows and house sparrows, greenfinches and goldfinches by the score would buzz around the fields of November and December while with later winter ploughing the flocks would still be safe until Christmas with the open larder or loose grain fallen and sprouting in autumn rains.

I would sit quietly in the hedgerow on Saturday afternoon or at dusk after school in the weekday 
as the horses Blossom and Smiler ploughed their last furrow before returning to the stables in the valley.

This was the best time to see the roving flocks of birds as they sped about on a last flight of play before retiring to the hedges to roost.

So ingrained has this scene become that nowadays I find it very odd to see a tractor ploughing the autumn stubbles with hardly a finch in attendance.

Last week I did actually see a flock of finches on stubbles above Marden Down, a mere 25 birds. In the old days two or three thousand birds would be common. Where have they all gone?

Wet, warm summers have allowed avian pox to spread from wood pigeons to finches, while early-autumn ploughing has buried their seed larders during the cold weather.

This has disadvantaged another very common sight of my lone (never lonely) vigils on the upland downs 
of Norfolk.

As soon as the plough team departed, hares would rise from their forms among the stubble, and start a game of chasing and catching until they settled down to grazing.

Some of the corn crops had been undersown with grass seed that now would form next year’s crop of hay. These new leys would be wonderful for wild birds.

Here the grey partridge found secure winter land: I could see three or four covies of 20 birds each to a field of 20 acres.

These were the proper wild native birds, not just the chukor cannon-fodder crosses we see today. In winter thousands of skylarks would spend winter on the stubbles and the meadows. Today I see a single bird now and again.

Even corncrakes bred on the old meadowlands, safe from pesticides, for there was none of those. Today the horse in the furrow brings back arcadia for a few fleeting moments.

I suppose one has to be grateful just to see that relic of a golden time, though few people today would ever know what treasures that distant time held as well.