After the Rain
c.15.45 - 17.00 Quite damp!
Yes, better to wait, Sid!
17:30: Heavy rains finished finally and a good chance of post pour activity.
Greys in every hue hung horizon to horizon: heavy smoky clouds barely heaving themselves above the trees, bank on bank of slates and pearls, ripple-edged and ragged, coldly boiling, slowly lightening, gradually lifting, parting to reveal further layers of dank and dark, with just a hint of bright from a sun in hiding.
But the world was re-waking: Swifts specked the sky, Sky larks ascended, tripping notes to trail in their sloping lift; tit flocks noisy in the hedgerows competing with Whitethroats; young Yellowhammers, streaky brown and yellow, lemon gapes down-turned - a grimace to the weather - squeaked from hawthorns, and elders in blown-out-umbrella flower fullness; Swallows swooped low and darkly against the land. A Blackbird chucked noise at a Little owl hidden in wet leaf, watched by Linnets and Goldfinches.
And beyond, the cry of a Hobby: two out from hidden shelters to circle a copse still shaking rain, then to land and mate, air steaming around their coupled pose, then to put up a soggy Crow, then to return to the ash.
A Kestrel up to its hover, air-perched, attracts a swirl of House martins - white rumps glowing, and Swifts - screaming and mating - follow in its wake, overtake and skim flies from rain-squeezed air. Out west a Sparrowhawk bobs a ball of Starlings as it circles; two Herons, squawking, lap heavily past. Yellow wagtails rise and fall into wheat where Lapwings hide. A single Gadwall flicks easterly at speed.
More calls from a Hobby fly across fields as they change positions but they remain at some distance, backed by a false horizon of charcoal cloud. The rain begins another spat, a failing sun extinguished again.
The bird we have been seeing over recent years may just be a lone individual and not one of a pair....we shall see....!
