Cycling along a path close to my home, minding my own business, I was all of a sudden aware of a great commotion in the scrub to my right hand side. In an instant, a chattering blackbird flew right out in front of me, close enough to make me squeeze the brakes and jolt forward slightly. Moments later, a larger bird, grey in the half-light of the evening, flew out afterwards with a rapidity that made me pause, and follow its line of flight across the road and through some bare trees the other side of the road. With an agility that reminded me of the Millennium Falcon weaving through asteroids (or for the newer generation, through the inside of a derelict Star Destroyer), it banked and turned so as to maintain speed whilst avoiding crashing into the interweaving branches of the young trees the blackbird used for cover. But it was not a falcon I had seen, but a sparrowhawk.
All of this, needless to say, happened in an instant. But it was thrilling to see such an exciting hunt, right in front of me, so close to my normal suburban home. When I think of the trials of life, the arms race between predator and prey, I think of lion and zebra, cheetah and gazelle, bear and … salmon? Anyway, the point is these are all exotic examples. Now, I don’t doubt that the thrill I felt in this fleeting glimpse of aerial agility is nothing compared to seeing a cheetah chase a gazelle at 120 kph, but it makes the valuable point that you don’t have to go far to witness dramatic scenes and see the frenzied game of life unfold before your eyes.
This is my second encounter with a sparrowhawk in recent weeks. The first was less ephemeral, and less dramatic, but to me no less exciting. I was privileged to see a sparrowhawk just after it had caught an unfortunate blackbird, and it landed close to me and began plucking the feathers away eagerly. This was near a public footpath, and
it soon got spooked and carried its dinner away, across a lake which I was convinced at one point it was going to crash into, weighed down by its prey. But I did have the opportunity to examine the strikingly banded breast of this beautiful and graceful bird, and I saw it stare at me with those intensely yellow and black eyes, which (if I were to anthropomorphise) were piercing and angry.
I have a soft spot for the sparrowhawk. Perhaps it’s because I spend a lot of my time defending it against people who don’t like the fact that it takes their garden birds. Although the British supposedly love their wildlife, and particularly their birds, there is a good deal of bias. In my experience they like the pretty, cheerful songbirds, and don’t mind seeing a cute cute mammal or two on a country walk (so long as they keep out of the home or garden). But it is possible that the vast majority of people don’t take pleasure in appreciating the diversity of life, the (sometimes unpleasant) relationships between them, and most importantly the wonderful self-regulating complexity of an ecosystem. But in seeing a hunt, even briefly, I am happy to say I was witness to just a hint of this epic system at work.