I n the summer, at weekends, the sound of motorbikes intrudes on the peace of early mornings. Almost everywhere we go in the country these days we are implored to "think bike", as we drive about.

But unfortunately, the bikers themselves don't seem to read these notices, because our local newspaper always has reports of accidents and deaths over the previous weekend.

Yesterday there was a new sound, gunfire, marking, or at least reminding me, that shooting started at the beginning of September for partridge and duck.

However, the natural world that I see every day is slowly being taken over by the pheasant. In just a few weeks, they have transformed themselves from the shadowy shy birds that hung around the release pens, to getting larger and bolder and now they can be seen everywhere.

Their comeuppance, gun fire, will start in November. It is ironic that when I note these preludes to the shooting season that I have just seen a hen pheasant with a nice brood of poults, and a partridge with a hatch of chicks. If they've got any sense, and they probably haven't, they'll leave off learning to fly for six months or so.

One day I saw five red kites on one field. I don't know if kites have a collective noun to go with them but it was a nice sight.

What had brought them there I don't know – perhaps they were a family on some sort of outing.

Out there in the media world that knows more about nature than those of us that live amongst it, they have just woken up to the fact that your average badger is very partial to a hedgehog supper. I've only seen one hedgehog run over on the road this year but lots of badgers.

I've been looking out for hedgehogs on purpose and I drive a lot of miles. The run over hedgehog used to be almost a given on any journey and the disappearance of the one and the proliferation of the other is a clear indication of the populations of both species.

It is also a given that farmers are bracketed in with badgers, for destroying the hedgehog habitat, which is a shame because they probably have more habitat than they've ever had for a generation. Two metres are now left untouched around every field, six metres around lots. Am I expecting too much in hoping that the "experts" will finally wake up to the fact that badgers also decimate the nests of ground nesting birds?

A quite reasonable and probably justified law to curb the activities of badger baiters has inadvertently let the badger population get out of control with a negative effect on other birds and animals.

■ About eight years ago a farmer at a show told me how he had gone to market in a brand new Land Rover, bought some cattle and duly backed his trailer up to the loading pens.

At market there are gates to put in place for loading and he'd dropped the ramp of his trailer and gone to get the cattle, putting various gates in place as he went. It is then a simple task to drive the cattle back to the trailer.

The first cattle went on to the trailer ramp and the trailer sat up in the air because in the few minutes he had been away (and never out of sight) someone had taken the Land Rover.

The worst bit was still to come; his insurance company wouldn't pay out a penny because he had left the keys in the Land Rover.

At that time, we as a family never took a key out of any vehicle, day or night. I went home that night and established a new regime whereby all keys had to be taken out at all times.

At first it was a damn nuisance – so many time I walked up to the yard, got in the car and then had to go back in the house for the keys.

There was another new regime established here last night. I locked the kitchen door when I went to bed. It felt really strange; I would guess that it's the first time the door has been locked in 45 years. In fact, we had no idea where the key was and had to buy a new lock just to get a key!

Last week my wife had some money stolen out of the drawer in the kitchen. It's money she puts by for Christmas. If I'd known it was there I could have warned her someone would steal it – I'd have had some myself.

It's left a really strange collection of feelings, the worst of which is the sort of witch hunt that goes on in your mind as you search for culprits.

It's not fair on us and it's not fair on the people who work here. It was too much money not to involve the police, not that I think they will find anyone – there was little enough for them to work on and no forced entry.

What is a shame is that it has changed the way we live our lives. The shed where we keep all our tools is wide open and that's next on our list of "to dos".

Strangely, when we came here to live over 40 years ago, every shed, lose box, granary and cattle yard was locked every night with a padlock and the farm foreman had to take this huge bunch of keys to the house every night when he finished work.

The driver for that would almost certainly have been the fact that they were only just coming out of an era when farm workers lived (only just) on subsistence wages.

Most of them would have poultry, or if they were the lucky ones they would have had a pig. There would be hardly any waste food in their lives and the bosses grain stores would be very attractive.

The place where the corn grinder was kept was built with 2in-thick boards and was as impenetrable as Fort Knox.

Life always goes in cycles, and here we are locking things up again. It makes me a bit sad.