Our sheep left us for their second home today, we share them with a shepherdess who doesn’t laugh at my jokes and can wrestle a horned ram out of a blackberry bush with her bare hands. Goodbye, I whispered as she piled them unceremoniously into the back of a lorry, come back next year, bring your babies. The field feels sad and empty. The sheep have left clumps of wool and suspicious bite marks on the apple trees and paths in the grass. The paths are long and thin and wavy. For the last six months I’ve watched the sheep from the kitchen window, treading the same route, moving when the others move, eating when the others eat. Sheep are born searching for a place to die, is a thing that farmers say. They do have a habit of looking very alive one second and then inexplicably, dramatically, hooves-to-the-stars the next. I watch the sheep and I also watch the birds. We live on a bird protection site but they don’t act like they need protecting. They taunt the sheep by going with the airflow, riding in the slipstreams. Sheep huddle but birds give each other space. When one bird falls behind the others sense it, change position, take strength in turns. No one knows where all the dead birds go, they don’t make a song and dance about it, that’s for living. It feels safe to walk along the flock path. It doesn’t go anywhere; you follow for a little while and then it just comes to an end. I wonder why they always chose this bit and not that, this tree and not that one. This is what surviving looks like, I guess. Not like the birds. One swallow does not make a summer, is a thing that people say but I think it’s a pretty good sign. Redwings are flying five hundred miles from scandinavia now and they only do that if it’s autumn. There has to be one at the front with the courage to move towards something new. Carried in the uplift of her wings, born searching for a place to stay alive, the others are right behind her.