halftwo
Wird Batcher
Swifts, low against the lush crops, scything, slicing, swerving, jinking and curving, magic boomerangs. Time stands still.
"Fftt-fftt-fftt-ft-ft...", their wing-slap as they wing past the ear, intent on flies rising.
Cumuli become a Paul Henry-worthy landscape, breathtakingly beautiful in their fleeting formations.
And now, over fifty Lapwings get up and circle, alarming, and scores of Black-headed gulls keep station above a skimming Sparrowhawk, which, having hugged the hedge, cuts the corner across the field to land in an ash - threat extinguished.
The Lapwings move on towards the river where a single Redshank joins the flock, distant and distinct.
But attention inevitably turns to the Hobby's call from the copse - as the female brings her mate's prey to the nest; a great slab of bloodied meat far too big for her newly-hatched chicks. She sits on the edge and ponders, realising the unsuitabilty of the offering and takes it away to dismember elsewhere, returning soon with more manageable morsels which she carefully dips below the nest's lip to young too small to be glimpsed from beyond the copse.
Whitethroats feed another brood in the hedge as the Hobby settles on her nest. Swifts rise and begin to bunch - out east two other Hobbies are co-ordinating a hirundine hunt and their intended prey swarm above them.
Perhaps these are last year's young from the territory and, unseen by their parents, continue to hunt as they turn north and disappear.
Three Kestrels move from post to post or hover, heads to the breeze, to hunt voles, peering from wood or air perches, while Buzzards turn in the warming day.
Later, much later, as I write, the male Hobby is hunting - full tilt and descending at a Swallow, wings whipping as his prey dives for the cover of a garden. He follows and both vanish below the hedge, but soon he is up again and on, on with the hunt. Hirundines swarm as he heads west and is gone.
Linnets's songs and Yellow wagtails' calls continue as a single Sand martin slips, fish-like, by.
"Fftt-fftt-fftt-ft-ft...", their wing-slap as they wing past the ear, intent on flies rising.
Cumuli become a Paul Henry-worthy landscape, breathtakingly beautiful in their fleeting formations.
And now, over fifty Lapwings get up and circle, alarming, and scores of Black-headed gulls keep station above a skimming Sparrowhawk, which, having hugged the hedge, cuts the corner across the field to land in an ash - threat extinguished.
The Lapwings move on towards the river where a single Redshank joins the flock, distant and distinct.
But attention inevitably turns to the Hobby's call from the copse - as the female brings her mate's prey to the nest; a great slab of bloodied meat far too big for her newly-hatched chicks. She sits on the edge and ponders, realising the unsuitabilty of the offering and takes it away to dismember elsewhere, returning soon with more manageable morsels which she carefully dips below the nest's lip to young too small to be glimpsed from beyond the copse.
Whitethroats feed another brood in the hedge as the Hobby settles on her nest. Swifts rise and begin to bunch - out east two other Hobbies are co-ordinating a hirundine hunt and their intended prey swarm above them.
Perhaps these are last year's young from the territory and, unseen by their parents, continue to hunt as they turn north and disappear.
Three Kestrels move from post to post or hover, heads to the breeze, to hunt voles, peering from wood or air perches, while Buzzards turn in the warming day.
Later, much later, as I write, the male Hobby is hunting - full tilt and descending at a Swallow, wings whipping as his prey dives for the cover of a garden. He follows and both vanish below the hedge, but soon he is up again and on, on with the hunt. Hirundines swarm as he heads west and is gone.
Linnets's songs and Yellow wagtails' calls continue as a single Sand martin slips, fish-like, by.
