Larks filled the skies with rippling, rising song. A red-legged partridge marched along the ridge stone of the barn in the evening: a rotund, plucky figure, puffing out its chest, gradually working itself up to its song—a deafening cacophony of clicks, screeches and honks, like the grind of broken machinery. Singing its lonely heart out for a mate, it jerked its little tail up and down, ratcheting up the volume as it peered across the fields.
