Country diary: The skies here are busy with satellites and fieldfares | Rchard Smyth

The red sun rising over the radar station on Alnwick Moor picks out the tall shape of a hare at our end of the meadow. It lopes forward a little way – forever appearing, as hares always do, to be on the brink of a forward roll – and then pauses, sits up and shakes the dew from its front paws. A nearby pheasant lets rip a choked cock-crow. Both of these animals are game, here in England (as is the red-legged partridge, toiling tortoise-like through the weeds at the meadow bottom). The pheasant and partridge were almost certainly released by gamekeepers, possibly last summer, and ended up in this farmland; hares, though, have been wild in Britain since the Romans were last here. As it happens we’re a little way north of Roman country. Hadrian’s Wall is 40-odd miles south. The roads up here are good and straight, but that has more to do with the British army than the Roman legions. The wind is crisp, despite the sun. Huge flocks of fieldfares – burly Vikings, their plunder done – are making their way north-east across the fields, back to their breeding grounds in Norway, Finland and eastern Europe – a reminder that winter, in some ways, is still with us. The evenings here get cold long before they get dark. It’s bitter by the time the stars begin to show. Northumberland night skies are wide and clear (we’re on the edge of the Northumberland International Dark Sky Park). It’s a while since I’ve seen so many stars. I know it’s been a while because it takes me some time to get used to how busy it’s got up there. There are currently about 15,000 satellites in orbit around our planet. The skies at night no longer dance a long, slow waltz. At any given time, there’s a handful of bright dots moving to a faster tempo, cutting in on the familiar constellations. Through binoculars, Jupiter looks as though it’s being buzzed by drones. And then there’s Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite convoy, trucking south across the heavens like a freight train. It would be unsettling even if you didn’t know who put it there. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com