Editorial 56 - I have walked in the footsteps . . .

I have walked in the footsteps a badger left in the morning dew, past diamond-lit spider webs in a silver dawn. I have sat in a hedgeback while a fat hare has fed up to me, pouncing on one lush patch of new grass after another, until he was so close I could have tickled him between the ears. I have watched otter kits playing in the dusk; foxes about their nefarious business; stoats swaggering along the riverbank; and weasels hunting dry stone walls, like animated needles threading stone haystacks. An owl once slaughtered a mouse not 6 feet from where I sat in the dusk; a pair of peregrines have taken their chicks for a first flight before my astonished eyes; I have seen the aerobatic courting of eagles in a bright Highland sky and stags duelling, dirty in the damp heather.

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