THE highlight of this spring’s birdsong has been more cuckoos calling than I’ve heard for years. Whether this is due to our success with the Larsen traps or self-control on the part of the Maltese and others, we can’t tell—probably a bit of both. However, it’s when birds squawk strange oaths at each other that spring is at its most interesting.
Yesterday, I was startled by the avian equivalent of two fishwives hurling insults across a street when a peregrine lumbered over my head. I know, peregrines don’t usually lumber, but this one had a bird almost as big as herself in her talons and she was yawing like a helicopter with an overweight underslung load as a crow attacked her, attempting to steal her prey.
The two disappeared into dead ground and I ran to see the fight. It looked as if the falcon had gone to ground to mantle over the kill, but, next, I saw the two of them spiral up in a dogfight. The air was thick with black feathers and the peregrine was clearly besting the bigger bird, which flew off in disgust. By good fortune, I had my binoculars and watched as she circled above the fields.
Denne historien er fra June 10, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 10, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
