We used to trail to see the tewits’ nests each spring,

Sometimes alone, or Uncle Tom would take us there

All dressed in tweeds, a hand-cut ash pole in his hand

In place of that black shovel that he heaved each day

To stoke the boiler for the engine at the mill.

 

As he was the one that knew best their favoured fields,

He’d lead the way, up Skipton Road, up to the Heath

Through bent gate swinging on its orange baling twine

That guarded the steep stile to the Bottleneck field.

 

Crest to crest the meadow opened out in that green dale

Where small streamlets puddled through lank grass in winter

After much rain. We’d forge our way up gentle slopes

Then scale another stile to reach gritstone gateposts

 

By the stone well where we would tread with caution

Where dumb cattle paddled mud on way to milking,

Each deep, round footprint filled, like a Yorkshire Pudding,

With grey gravy gunge, oily rainbow sheen on top.

 

We climbed the little hillock up to old Dales Lane

That winding rutted track marked plain upon the map

But inaccessible to all but rough tough tractors.

 

Crossing the ancient roadway we would next ascend

Just six steep steps before a narrow open stile

Atop which our objective would hove into view:

Sometimes in this field tewits nested or the next

That kept a temporary pond where once we clocked

An adder basking on a boulder in the summer sun.

 

And now we had to tread more cautiously, for fear

That we might crush even with child-sized Wellingtons

Those new-laid eggs all camouflaged against the straw

Still flaxen cream bleached by the winter frost and rain

Through which aspiring new-spring grassblades pushed up pale

 

The mother lapwings mewing wildly round our heads

Acting as if some predator had maimed their wings

Tried to distract our keen attention from their broods,

 

Each clutch of four as mottled as the moor, set out

Their tapered ends together neatly point to point.

Sometimes we picked one up to feel the gentle warmth

The decoy hen had just bequeathed to those she left.

 

And sometimes, sometimes, we could catch a fleeting glimpse

Of tawny, downy, browny-yellow powderpuffs

That scuttled fearful through the straw or sat there, still,

Hidden within the small depressions in the field

The first frail chicks, like we small children, innocent,

Inquisitive to journey with our lives still at the spring.