Views from a tractor seat.

All my life I have had an interest in my local wildlife. One of my greatest surprises and delights was how most of the birds and animals would treat a tractor as part of the scenery.  A tractor seat has afforded me some of my most intimate views and insights of our natural world. Of  course the tractors I am thinking of over thirty years ago were rather different than a tractor of today. At the time off my starting work it had only just dawned on tractor manufactures that perhaps the operator would like s little protection from the elements and the cabs they fitted were little more than canvas shelters. These cabs afforded little more than partial protection from the elements but did give the driver a rather more intimate experience of the surroundings. The other difference to modern versions I is size, they were much smaller.  No radio, no air con and the only suspension was the thickness of the foam rubber seat.  But they did bring the operator into closer contact with the surroundings than is possible today. If you have never driven a tractor or talked with those who do you may be surprised by what the drivers see and do whilst carrying out regular field operations. The only instance I will give on this post regards landings and their nests. Mappings were much more common thirty years ago, and at that time we used to run an inter row cultivated through the subscribers at least three times. Mappings like on the bare ground between the rows of beet. It was our habit to mark every nest with a stick on the first time through and ensure we lifted the cultivated clear of the ground over the eggs on every subsequent pass. While I'm sure we didn't save every nest we did save as many as we could. Farmers do care more than people know and more than most will admit. This post has been too long already so l will leave the many remarkable things I have seen for later posts.