Night Watch

After I took the dogs out for the final walk of the day , I slipped out of the cottage with William and took up a silent vigil in the shelter of the Church Wall.
I wanted to watch the nocturnal exploits on the field, it is not a thing that I have ever done before and William is an ideal companion as he will sit and watch any given situation in typical welsh terrier silence.
Now I know a fox visits the small collection of 18 field houses regularly. I don't mind this at all, as every night the birds are safely locked away .....I do have a problem, however, with a daytime fox visitor, as a daytime predator is a dangerous one.. If I had a gun then a daytime raider would be shot......at night I would leave them well alone.
Anyhow, the little grey hen that was lost on Monday was a wanderer....on that level, her loss was her own fault. Leaving the safety of the field meant that she was in essence a wild creature, and you cannot blame an opportunistic fox or stoat or feral cat ( remember that awful creature that often attacks Albert?) for what comes naturally.
So, I sat down on an old deckchair in the dark and listened to the night , It was an interesting experience. Apart from the roar of the wind in the Church yard trees,you would have thought that there would be nothing to hear...... but you would be wrong.   The noisiest house is,of course the Indian runner coop. Constantly the seven adolescent ducks seem to react to the smallest of stimuli and they chatted quietly to themselves in a continual low murmur.
From the collection of hen houses comes the occasional flutter of wings as a hen repositions herself on a perch, and I can just hear a phlegm sounding  cough from one of the heavy ghost hens in the furthest coop, all of them together sound like a collection of asthmatic old ladies .

In the faint glow of the lane light I can just make out the silent face of Winnie peeping through the goose house window and beyond him the turkey houses are quiet, the bigger birds settled and asleep in their warm shavings. 
As we sat there we both noticed a movement to our right and out of the gloom of the graveyard fences,shuffled two large badgers. With their heads down, they searched the ground greedily hoovering up discarded layers pellets in the turkey enclosure. When one picked up the entire carved pumpkin I had left out for Boris to pick over, the other trotted over to the runner duck house and sniffed loudly at the door.
I almost laughed as the ducks suddenly went silent (I could picture them all holding their breath) and the badger slowly moved on, blundering in between the houses and coops.
Eventually William ( who was shaking with almost uncontrolled excitement at this stage) let out the tiniest whine and immediately both badgers raised their heads then shuffled off towards the safety of the field borders.
It was a fascinating and worth while 30 minutes out of my day