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Message: <blockquote data-quote="halftwo" data-source="post: 1622455" data-attributes="member: 45720">Peregrine Et AlGolden leaves on a gentle breeze, half-warm wind from a watercolour sky, neatly squared-off hedges hiding furrows in newly-bared fields, the remains of cornstalks standing  yellow and torn, liquid sunshine slanting low through rustling trees... Atop the shorn hedge a frightened bobbing bunch of sparrows and wagtails, and the cause of their fear: a female Sparrowhawk. She launches and comes straight at me, eyes fierce and intent, swerving at the last second to skim my ear, over the opposite hedge to fall on prey in the field - but misses, and amid a panicked corkscrew of passerines she goes to the nearest tree to re-plan.Along this hedge within yards: look! A young male Kestrel eyes me, pauses, and flies to hover close by, grey tail dipping to hold him steady, wings pushing air below him.No sooner had the next corner come and gone when yet another raptor on the hedge: an adult female Kestrel - she takes off to land on a post not far off - but she had been watching something else. Something in the ploughed field beyond, and that something now held me.Pulling white feathers from a newly-dead corpse a big Peregrine, light-backed in juvenile plumage, slaty brown against the browner earth, ripped into a Wood pigeon, standing sturdy on columnar legs, watching for danger, though she hadn't seen me.The falcon filled her crop -  eating the pigeon from its head down - greedily devouring the victim, when a strange thing...A Grey wagtail, tail pulsing, pale vent a lovely yellow in the setting sun,  flickered its way slowly to within inches of the Peregrine. The falcon watched and ate. The wagtail, seemingly oblivious to the danger, passed as close as a quick strike could catch, continued behind the raptor as if fascinated by the feathers drifting palely down the wind.Taking off and appearing huge, the Peregrine, crop distended and, in her huge talons the remains of the meal, powered up and circled to the nearest pylon, where a swirl of Meadow pipits danced around the wires, attending danger.Rooks, seeing death, rose from the cornfield's giant stubble and filled the sky like inky blots on a pale canvas. But the falcon rested and having fed, took no heed, leaving to the north.A horse and rider approached between hedges, like a surfer half-hidden between rollers.The fields returned to busy calm, corvids began to gather again, Collared doves and finches, wagtails and sparrows, hundreds all told, were joined by a swarm of two hundred Starlings flashing and whirring in the horizon-resting sun and they all began to glean until the field seemed  alive itself. Somewhere, high above other hedges, a well-fed Peregrine circled to roost.</blockquote>

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