[halftwo]

Or, "Hunting The Hobby"

The Hobby is an idea, an ideal, an end, a quarry. I seek them out like a pilgrim. They cross my heart as they cross the sky, they drift in and out of my head as they drift in and out of sight.
The possiblity of them pulls at me and I must go.
And so go I did.

At the roadside, limply dead Polecat lies.
In the hedge gap by the lane, corn and barley crops split by set aside, bright with poppies and ox-eye daisies, thirteen half-grown Grey partridges crouch, cyptic and still, watching, silent under the wind.
Two sharp calls of unseen and high House martins will cause a scrutiny of the sky, thick with cloud. And, sure as a promise, the Hobby drives the spirit to sprint before it, splits the before and the after. In a thin slice of silence it is gone.
At the corner the young Little owl looks down from its oak, pale and unblinking. Around the Swallowy farm the path leads on. Down in the creek banks purples and lilacs of loostrife and thistle, and pinks of late ragged robin crowd the eye. One damselfly offers a dot of neon.
Past Barn owl boxes and over a hump of hillock thick with crops, as I begin the descent a sound freezes my feet. Distant, half-heard, a Grasshopper warbler has just sang for a second or two. I wait and hear it once more, but it remains invisible.
Along the river, forested with thick vegetation, with hog-weed canopy ten feet tall, Yellowhammers sing half songs and Whitethroats flit away. Striped snails, like bent humbugs, cling to nettle stems where Banded demoiselles, torpid in the cool, allow me to take them in my hand, glinting steely blue and blue-black.
At the stile, for no reason I can give you, I turn my head, and there is the Hobby, skimming wind and advancing. Beating upwind and drifting down, flycatching with easy grabs, lazily keeping station above the haymaking.
Swifts approach, seeming to know they are safe, the falcon ignores them.
As the prolonged view becomes a test of arm stamina over the will to watch, the Hobby crosses the river, circles me, gains height, slips into a different gear. Suddenly, using the wind, it accelerates to blinding speed and is gone eastwards.
A minute later a world full of Swifts heads west overhead, knowing now they are prey.
Around the meander towards the bridge a Stonechat - very rare patch bird - skims the wheat away from me. It tries to take the day's accolade, but the Hobby remains fused in the mind's eye.
Back along the lane a Wren skims the tarmac like a small brown Kingfisher, watched by Linnets on the wire, clutching the cable, crab-like in the wind. A Hare crouches on the verge as I pass, faith in its camouflage. A Kestrel, ragged in moult, takes a mouse to the pylon.
Hungry and satisfied I head home.

[deborah4]

Originally Posted by halftwo

Striped snails, like bent humbugs, cling to nettle stems

like it!

Seems Hobbies are doing well this year, seen quite a few in Sussex but still the scarcer of the common raptors cf. to Buzzard, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and Perrys, here at the moment - so always a joy to see.

[pianoman]

Originally Posted by halftwo

Striped snails, like bent humbugs, cling to nettle stems

Four more syllables and it'd be a Haiku

[halftwo]

Have just been back to see if the Stonechat was still around - no sign.
Again, don't know why, I must be acquiring a sixth sense, I turned in time to see (probably the same, male - slim winged, dainty jizz) Hobby, in almost the same place as yesterday.
All too quickly he went out of sight.
Wind even stronger - birds keeping hidden, so was pleased by two events on the way home:

• rescued a (too) young Whitethroat from the road, just before two cars came along - got well scolded by the parent for my trouble.

• saw a Stoat cross the road right in front of me, black-tipped tail disappearing last into cover.

Now, as you say Debs, always great to see a Hobby, but Stoats I could count on the fingers of one clock in a year.

Edit: Hobby eggs should just be hatching around now, so it would make sense that the male is on the wing much more than the female - which will start hunting to supply the young increasingly over the next month - then, of course (fingers crossed) we'll have young on the wing.

[halftwo]

Originally Posted by pianoman

Four more syllables and it'd be a Haiku

There's a challenge I can't resist Pianoman.

Striped snails, like bent humbugs,
Cling calmly unstung to
Nettlestems


PS. I've just edited my last post.