Davy had to go with her, for fear that she might get lost, too. She marched across the hillsides with a bird book in one hand, Ian’s binoculars around her neck and a transparent umbrella held sideways to shield her complexion from the chapping wind. She was determined to see something unusual, but almost nothing moved on the drear, dun, snow-streaked slopes. At last a couple of largish birds, alarmed no doubt by the umbrella, rose and flapped sulkily away into the distance. Mum identified them as blackcock, local to rare in those parts; Davy, no puritan about birds, agreed for the sake of her pleasure, though privately he thought they were some sort of crow. Apart from them they saw nothing but a snowy owl which turned out to be a sheep skull and a red fox which was only a rusty bit of corrugated iron. They trudged home, cheered by the blackcock. “Look, there’s a bear,” said Mum. “Honestly, Mum, they’re extinct.” “Well, it could’ve got out of a zoo. Or somebody might’ve had it for a pet and brought it out here when it got a bit too large for the flat.
