Ocotober 2026 - Bovine interventions

I persuade my partner to come for a walk to the pond  - I promise not to stop and draw - I just want to see if there’s any water back in the pond. When I last visited it had completely dried up. Walking through the fields the stream beside the track still has no water, nor is there any in the dip under the trees between the two fields; this is not a good sign.

It’s one of those bright autumnal-feeling days – pale sunshine filtering through the trees, blue sky, a chill in the air.

We walk into the woods and immediately see that there is still no water, leaving the earthen bottom exposed. It’s definitely wetter than when I last visited in early August when there had been no rain for weeks. The shallow dip looks muddy; it rained here a couple of days ago, but not enough to have made a difference. Small deep holes hold puddles of water and I stagger about walking on the uneven surface. Amongst the layers of organic debris and sediment that have collected over many years, more green plants are now spreading across the surface, taking advantage of the absence of water.

I try to find the original boundaries of the pond – try following the earth banks into the trees, but it’s difficult to know what is just a field boundary and what is bank. I get tangled up in the brambles and retreat.

I walk around righting the stick I put to demarcate the pond’s boundaries - they’ve been knocked about a bit. The remaining strip of paper I left hanging in the tree has disappeared.

Some of the trees here are pretty substantial - one of the larger trees sits on the earth banks - and must have been here for a while, while others are just saplings. We can see where the land rises and one of the banks must be underneath all the brambles.

 A chiff-chaff is calling intermittently, but every time I try to record it, it stops, but what I do record, and suddenly realise has been calling all the time I’ve been here, is a cow - bellowing somewhere close. I walk out of the wood and there she is, standing as if waiting for me. Is this the cow that has been walking in the pond? Was she waiting for me to leave? I wonder if the cow has been conducting her own project, unaware of me doing mine – and now we’ve finally met. She stops bellowing and looks at me, she has a number - 680483 - I walk up and greet her.  Perhaps we can collaborate? She tosses her head, she’s already (maybe unwittingly) made contributions to the project. I think she’s been knocking down my sticks, pretty sure that she’s made the deep holes in the floor of the pond - they are hoof sized - and maybe she ate the piece of paper I left hanging in the tree. There are no other cows around, which is strange; I don’t know whether she’s part of a herd and has left the rest to come down and conduct her own project in the wood.

Until next time……