Battle of the Birds

January 12, 2015 on 6:45 pm by Michael Grey | In Humour, Photographs, Random Thoughts, Stories | Comments Off on Battle of the Birds

The desperate battle of the birds. And, no, not a rare Friday night girl-fight, and no talk of the pibroch generally known by that name; a few words this moment on fighting flying feathered creatures.

There’s a good few titles in the pipe music repertoire that feature birds, especially hawks: “The Hawk”, “The Hawk that Swoops on High”, “Ca’ Hawkie thro’ the Water” from David Glen’s collection (though doubt Hawkie was a bird – with or without feathers), the Australian Simon Blackshaw’s, “Howlin’ Hawks” and, my favourite title of the lot, Chris Armstrong’s, “Dive Bombing Shitehawks”. I even have a ditty that falls in the category of hawk: “Like a Hawk” – have a look in my free book five if you’re interested.

So now that I’ve given myself an excuse to post some hawk pics on a piping blog, I’ll carry on.

Yesterday I was out in the woods. While walking along the trail a huge hawk swooped by about 15 meters in front of me. The bird was clearly carrying a heavy burden. Hanging lifeless (I hope) from his beak was what I thought was a crow. I say crow because the hawk was under siege by two relentlessly screeching black crows – these birds also of impressive size. While I thought it weird a hawk would eat crow – like so many of us do (or should) – I had it in my mind the crows were trying to rescue kin: the previously-mentioned fresh black dangling carrion.

Led by the siren shrieks of the crows I moved toward the hawk, now resting at the side of the frozen lake, planning, no doubt, the timely scarfing of his warmish makings of crow pie.

The crows gave up – or fled the scene – after about five minutes of caterwauling. The hawk, in turn, flew a few meters into the shoreline field. Had I been on Benbecula I’d almost call this grassy area a machair. So I made my way to where I thought the hawk landed. And lucky me, there, clearly visible through the snow-covered grass, he perched. There was no clear sign of his prey but he was in plain view and seemingly wasn’t bothered in the least with me. So I chanced it and crept closer to him to get what I hoped would be a good photo.

It was while keenly clicking the camera shutter about 3.5 meters away from him that I had a vision: a vision of me with no vision. I imagined the hawk pissed off with his meal-time interruption – me. Kind of like how your father might’ve been if one of your friends knocked on the door at suppertime – only times ten (sorry, I digress). I don’t know much, if anything, about the behaviour of hawks but I wasn’t about to test my imagined hawk-eye-plucking vision.

So I backed off. And carried on (carrion – get it? Oh my ribs). Good advice, probably, for a lot of life situations.

When I got home and looked closely at the pics I’m fairly sure I’m wrong – again! The imagined crow looks pretty squirrelly to me.

Whatever. You be the judge.

I found the whole thing fascinating.

M.