It is this essential part of life that often gets so many people so hot under the collar, drives grown men to virtual acts of heroism or even in the case of my outlaw, sorry mother in law, very upset by what is nature at both its rawest and most brutal.
The course provided an insight into peoples feelings regarding such topics which relayed some very very ancient fears and misconceptions about wildlife. One saga I was told surrounded a former prison officer and others in a Nature Reserve that shall remain nameless in the Druridge Bay area attempting to rescue a rabbit from the clutches of a hungry stoat. He said, it was the screams and struggles he didn’t appreciate; the good news is although temporarily successful in their attempts to abort the stoat’s right to his supper, the rabbit however, not being the sharpest tool in the box only ran as far as the nearest car and was quickly recaught and the stoat got his just desserts.
A supreme predator to be admired not abhored
I mean what makes some people think it is ok to feed birds wholesale, eat a bacon sarnie or ware leather shoes. My brother has just come back from Kenya from the trip of a lifetime. He told me how everyone on the trip was so looking forward to the ‘big 5’ and even a kill of sorts. But he was gobsmacked when they eventually came across a hunt and subsequent kill that the same people were screaming at the guide to go and stop the lions and one couple even complained to the rep, saying they had seen it on TV and thought is was all made up.
Human sensibilities are so strange I can never make our species out, we are the most destructive species ever to walk the planet and yet we cry at Walt Disney (me included). My mother in law is forever pestering me about the sparrowhawk that raids her garden bird table so much so that I rigged some defence systems up to deter him and stop her bleating on like a stuck record… a blue tit today, a great tit next, then a blackbird this week, on and on. However, I had underestimated the aerial prowess of this mighty little hunter.
Another splendid hunter that should be admired
Staying late one afternoon after the obligatory tea and rock buns I was watching the through the back window, definitely more enthralling than who was singing in the choir or ‘are you sure you don’t want another rock bun’. I saw him, circling above the back fields, looking for his moment. I could see his route a steep bank to the left in a wide arc right and sweep in along the garden from left to right. My cunningly placed anti sparrowhawk defences were perfectly placed, newly washed smalls, t-shirts, jeans, a couple of sweatshirts and some blouses, all flapped randomly the result of a broken washer.
Surely not this time? Here he was, the bank sharp at first then levelling out to hedge height then sweeping right over the fence into his bomb run, shirts and bloused waving in defiance but his eye was truly focused. In what seemed an eternity that in reality was a split second he wound deftly through the washing various criss crossing fabrics, folding his wings he slid between the waving legs of a pair of Levis, his eye still fixed on his target? My own eyes hardly able to keep up with the events flicked from target to attacker, then in true Dam buster style a near vertical escape around the gazebo, his prize clutched firmly in yellow talons. Truly awe inspiring stuff, that Guy Gibson would be proud of, as for poor cock robin, well he paid the price of one too many bacon bits he now takes his place in the great bird table in the sky the circle of life complete.
“Well, I think I will have another rock bun Winifred, oh yes and a cup of tea” smug I sat back with the vision fresh in my mind nature yet again at its most brutal but also it’s most beautiful. The sparrowhawk will sleep happily that night free from the risk from almost instant starvation and the day after another robin came bob bob bobbin along.
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