Familiar circular walk around Claxton, along Spong lane, pooh stick bridge and around Carlton church and back past the horses. Bright spring sunshine, the skylarks and rooks of Norfolk, children charging about and adults in conversation.
My eyes to the ground looking for evidence of the animal lives lived and lost in this landscape of my wife's childhood. A tawny owl skull and feathers in the hedge bank of Folly lane, a rather sad and now scattered carcass, perhaps a victim of an unfortunate meeting with a vehicle. Then a lone stoat skull in the dried oak and pine twigs at the side of the graveyard under the hedge, evidence perhaps of a fight to the death with another stoat, there are few animals that can best this tough little hedgerow assassin with it's impressive incisors. I picked up a hare skull on the top field earlier in the week, notably larger than the rabbit skulls usually seen, the hares and ever present feature of this part of the country although not many seen this week, leggy and bounding in the distance as in a Rob Barnes linocut.
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