Day 159

Wednesday 26 August

Finally, the strong winds of storm Fancis have subsided this afternoon and things are returning to normal. That’s a nice turn of phrase, ‘returning to normal’, let’s hope we can say that with more certainty and frequency over the months ahead.

I have neglected to mention the view from my back garden of late. I feel I need to check in with this more often. During lockdown it became my daily window of wonderful things. As spring became summer, the content of this view altered, sometime subtly and sometimes more abruptly.

The grass is scattered with debris form the trees; a few twigs and branches but no leaves which is a good sign. When Autumn comes creeping, there is always an angry, windy day that strips the clothes from the limbs of the trees. That’s always my own red-letter day that summer has ended, even if autumn hasn’t quite begun.

Back to today and the ‘returning to normal’ theme. Now that the wind has calmed down the birds are back out and today, I finally got to see the Sparrowhawk again. It’s been around for the whole of the summer but has always eluded me. I say ‘the sparrowhawk’, singular, but I think I saw a fairly young bird. So there may have been a family around.

Looking through my window of wonderful things, I saw it in the orchard making steady runs along the line of trees forming the windbreak. It would climb into the breeze and hold a position, just higher than the tallest trees, looking down on the sparrows and finches flitting amongst the apple trees below.

It didn’t dive at all, making me think that it was young and possibly a bit of a hawking novice. It then became clear that an altercation was in full flow between our sparrowhawk and a crow. A few weeks back, I had seen a rather ragged looking crow giving a heron a hard time over the field next to our neighbours pond. And again, a few weeks before that to a lone buzzard that had split from it’s trio. I think it is likely to be the same one, I hope so anyway.

I love the idea of a cantankerous old crow giving these young upstarts a bit of grief. He (I’m saying that he’s a male) is like an old man, stick-shaking at the trespassers. If I kicked a football over there, he would confiscate it and probably burst it too. The young sparrowhawk is just learning or playing, doing what they do, but the old-crow hates to see youngsters enjoying themselves. Back in his day…grrr!

Anyway, the sparrowhawk gave as good as he/she got and after a few minutes was repeating his training flights along the edge of the woods. And the old-crow with his missing feathers? Well I imagine he hobbled home with his grumpy disposition and mumbling how ‘Kids today. When I was their age….hrmph’