During the Second World War, Jimmy Bancroft Niall MacGinnis, a fighter pilot just released from hospital, and his nurse and girlfriend Hazel Broome Rosamund John are on a peaceful walking tour through the countryside. They arrive at the fictional village Lipsbury Lea and, being keen birdwatchers, discover a pair of tawny pipits nesting nearby.
News of the rare sight travels quickly, drawing twitchers from the cities to the tranquil shoreline of fields and hedges. Jimmy and Hazel take on a practical mission: they recruit several locals to protect the nesting site until the eggs hatch, a plan that is enthusiastically supported and organized by the fiery retired Colonel Barton-Barrington Bernard Miles and the Reverend Mr. Kingsley Christopher Steele. The sense of community grows as the village rallies around this unusual conservation effort.
The field where the nest sits, locals call it the pinfold, is scheduled to be ploughed by order of the county’s War Agricultural Executive Committee. A delegation travels to London to appeal to the Ministry of Agriculture, but the order is not rescinded. The minister turns out to be Barton-Barrington’s Marlborough schoolmate, who personally intervenes to save the field, highlighting the personal ties that connect people even in wartime.
As if the situation weren’t delicate enough, the village is later visited by a female Russian sniper Lucie Mannheim. She campaigns for public support during the German occupation of Russia and speaks to the dignity of rural life, even offering a sniper rifle to the colonel as a symbol of solidarity and strength.
The eggs hatch without incident, but a plot to steal them is foiled by the vigilance of the soldiers stationed nearby. An alert army corporal who is also a professional ornithologist, Corporal Philpotts Stuart Latham, helps uncover the attempted theft and ensures that the rare nesting birds remain safe.
In the final moment, the village gathers for thanks in the local church while a Spitfire, piloted by Jimmy, sweeps overhead in a low, respectful pass. The plane bears a special tribute to the birds by being renamed anthus campestris (Tawny Pipit), a quiet nod to the very creatures that united the community and offered a sense of normalcy amid the war.
