Night Vision

Photo by Jo Sinclair

I couldn't get enough of it. A sunny day on Sunday after an entire week of grey and cold, and I didn't want to go back indoors. I set off for a night walk at sunset with something in mind.

Leaving the village I passed a farm and a hill grazed by shadowy sheep. A buzzard was silhouetted on a fence post as the sun seeped pink and bloodied below telephone wires. The cycle path had been given a bit of a Peaky Blinders clip, leaving narrow strips of sprawling poppies and ox-eye daisies racing away to join up with the old chalk grassland sainfoin, vetch, trefoil and knapweed. These are on a designated piece of protected verge that has been brutally ploughed in ugly deep gashes in a violent gesture to oust the travellers that pitched up here last year.

I looked out for the barn owls I'd been told about as I turned towards the next village. There's a wild mauve corner at the moment where phacelia tanacetifolia  has been planted for wildlife and game bird cover. The barns of a 19th century farmstead stood looking like picture-book barn owl territory, but their beautiful white shapes did not materialise.

Photo credit: Mathesont

Stepping onto the stony track, a Dutch barn was the only landmark in the wheat prairie. The last two people of my day headed towards me: a lone male cyclist followed by a woman cyclist and her panting border collie. Now I could go off-piste, and a vaguely illicit feeling came over me with the dark as I skirted the hedges and edges. I was waiting to be quietly consumed by the early summer month of June.

I followed an animal pathway through corn stubble to the river bank. What comes this way and what for? A drink? A plunge through the water to the opposite side? My sheep farmer relative in Northumberland told me the paths the sheep make are 'trods'. I came across 'fare' for rabbit or hare, and smeuse (which I learned from Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks) is the tell-tale archway of brambles or grass through which animals regularly squeeze.

I saw one, two, three crepuscular hares.

I heard a yelping cry, but no repeat and no owl fly-past, so was left wondering. I moved along the edge of this field that appeared to be a bit of set-aside: stubble, with ploughed strips along the edge. There were traces of animal activity such as scrapings in the soil, and gathered straw. In the dark the discs of elder blooms lit up like moons.

I found the sett: black holes disappearing underground, compacted clay and chalk conspicuously smoothed over above. A few minutes further on I saw a lumbering beast, but it was too dark to be sure of what it was. Brambles and nettles lined a ditch to the north of the field; there was no way through here so I used the Dutch barn to guide me, and soon found an animal path leading to a favourite spot of mine, a magnificent broken willow by a bend in the river with a high kingfisher bank and mini shingle island. A deer barked. Roe, I think; I've been  here at dawn in winter and photographed them in the frost.

In the twilight I saw a little tussock covered in straw. The tussock moved. Curious, I stepped close enough for it to become 'baby badger' in my brain. Chewing and snuffling, the creature was oblivious to my presence. It was virtually doing handstands as it trowelled its way through the stubble into the soil. I had to lean close to make it out. The badger paused only once, black and white stripes facing me on high alert. But my presence was shrugged off: just a white delighted grin and white tennis shoes standing over it. The youngster was only truly startled when I turned to head off home. It was horrified, giving a hiss and then a small growl before relaxing as I backed off as delicately as I could, still smiling.

I waded blindly through undergrowth until I reached the footpath. Still two weeks away from full moon and summer solstice,  at ten thirty the well-trodden path snaked chalkily ahead in the landscape. I'd have preferred not to be hemmed in by chain-link fence and barbed wire all the way back though; I'm not used to night walks, and have an animal instinct to slink away at any sign of humans.