Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Sunday 20th June 1999
WE HAVEN'T walked through the wood for a week. Now it has become a leafy tunnel and, along the path to the quarry, it's beginning to feel rather cramped. We lift our arms as we walk between chest-high nettles in a small clearing.
A pair of Curlew have come to a field on the valley slope which has recently been cut for silage (the one where we saw the lark descending). We very occasionally hear the call of the curlew in the distance but we've rarely seen them on our regular walk. This is the bird that reminds me of wild places - of moorland and estuaries. It's great to see this pair on our home patch.
The Curlew reminds me of a favourite magazine from childhood. On a summer holiday in the Lake District, when I was aged nine, I came across a copy of The Young Naturalist at a newsagents in the market square in Keswick. I remember my excitement in discovering a magazine that featured something as wonderful as a curlew on the cover. Seeing how I devoured the magazine, my parents ordered me a regular copy.
It's midsummer's eve. Bullocks let out to graze the aftermath on the curlews' field come down to drink and crash about in the long grasses at the edge of the canal. Swallows skim over the water.
WE HAVEN'T walked through the wood for a week. Now it has become a leafy tunnel and, along the path to the quarry, it's beginning to feel rather cramped. We lift our arms as we walk between chest-high nettles in a small clearing.
A pair of Curlew have come to a field on the valley slope which has recently been cut for silage (the one where we saw the 
It's midsummer's eve. Bullocks let out to graze the aftermath on the curlews' field come down to drink and crash about in the long grasses at the edge of the canal. Swallows skim over the water.