The cannon fodder of the natural world

Recalling the fate of a nest of chicks from his youth, Soldier Palmer ponders on the fast-producing, hardy birds known as meadow pipits

- Soldier Palmer

I’ve always had an interest in natural history. My parents encouraged me by collecting feathers and shells for me

wherever they went, and soon I had an entire shoebox full of curiosities. I have my family to thank for starting me off, but my fascination really exploded one afternoon in May in the early 1990s.

My father was working with cattle, and I was left to my own devices on a steep bank of rough grass and heather above the pens. I would lounge there, throwing my toys down a steep scree face of rock and fallen sand. It was fun to see the plastic shapes bounce and tumble — particularly the mannequin of a soldier with a chiselled jawline and six-pack.

That small expression of manliness seemed to invite destruction; I felt like he was offering to be tested, so I would fling him off cliffs and on to steep roofs, marvelling that he could survive any punishment. He finally met his end in a barley bruiser, which in retrospect was far beyond the call of duty. The machine spat him out in shreds, and that was the end of that.

Bold as greasepaint 

On this particular day, I was devising some new torture for the mannequin when my eye was drawn to a small shimmer of movement in the heather nearby. Looking closer, I realised that I had found an adder — a beautiful silver male with a black zigzag pattern as bold as greasepaint on its back.