io LADY DAY IN DEVON 

 leaves among their yellow flowers. A 

 tawny owl lives in a pollard hornbeam in this 

 clump; he comes regularly at dusk to my 

 cottage and hoots with mournful insistence 

 to the barn owls that roost under the thatch. 

 Rabbits' bones and fur, finches' feathers, 

 and the fragile skulls of mice hang in the 

 crevices of the tree, hundreds of them, 

 some fresh and white, others hidden under 

 the brown dust of decay that trickles from 

 the old tree's dead heart. Tap his home, 

 and he flaps out, pursued by any small 

 birds searching for spiders or grubs in the 

 spinney. The trees are dwarfed, bent by 

 the salt winds; a few larches grew here, 

 but never more the sap will rise and burst 

 in emerald foam on their wispy branches. 

 Constant buffeting with the winds of the 

 ocean has killed them. A magpie is pros- 

 pecting the mazed brittleness of one of 

 them for a nesting site ; she appears nearly 

 every morning. 



Beyond the clump is a combe, or valley, 



