A roaring southerly gale drove waves to lash the high sea-wall, flinging their spray up through the air above. On the lee side of the wall the long, dry grass was burning. Gasps of yellow flame and northward streaming smoke jetted away in the wind. There was a fierce anguish of heat, like a beast in pain. The short grass on top of the wall glowed orange and black; it hissed when the salt spray thudded down. Under a torrid sky, and in the strength of the sun, water and fire were rejoicing together.
When the waders suddenly flew, I looked beyond them and saw a peregrine lashing down from the northern sky. By the high hunched shoulders, and the big head bent between, and the long, flickering shudder-up and shake-out of the wings, I knew that this was the tiercel. He flew straight towards me, and his eyes seemed to stare into mine. Then they widened in recognition of my hostile human shape. The long wings wrenched and splayed as the hawk swerved violently aside.
I saw his colours clearly in the brilliant light: back and secondaries rich burnt sienna; primaries black; underparts ochreous yellow, streaked with arrowheads of tawny brown. Down the pale cheeks the long dark triangles of the moustachial lobes depended from the polished sun-reflecting eyes.
Through the smoke, through the spray, he glided over the wall in a smooth outpouring, like water gliding over stone. The waders shimmered to earth, and slept. The hawk’s plumage stained through shadows of smoke, gleamed like mail in glittering spray. He flew out in the grip of the gale, flicking low across the rising tide. He slashed at a floating gull, and would have plucked it from the water if it had not flown up at once. He flickered out into the light, a small dark blemish diminishing along the great sword of sun-dazzle that lay across the estuary from the south.
By dusk the wind had passed to the north. The sky was clouded, the water low and calm, the fires dying. Out of the misty darkening north, a hundred mallard climbed into the brighter sky, towering above the sunset, far beyond the peregrine that watched them from the shore and the gunners waiting low in the marsh.
October 18th
The valley a damp cocoon of mist; rain drifting through; jackdaws elaborating their oddities of voice and flight, their rackety pursuits, their febrile random feeding; golden plover calling in the rain.
When a crescendo of crackling jackdaws swept into the elms and was silent, I knew that the peregrine was flying. I followed it down to the river. Thousands of starlings sat on pylons and cables, bills opening wide as each bird had his bubbly, squeaky say. Crows watched for the hawk, and blackbirds scolded. After five minutes’ alertness the crows relaxed, and released their frustration by swooping at starlings. Blackbirds stopped scolding.
The fine rain was heavy and cold, and I stood by a hawthorn for shelter. At one o’clock, six fieldfares flew into the bush, ate some berries, and flew on again. Their feathers were dark and shining with damp. It was quiet by the river. There was only the faint whisper of the distant weir and the soft gentle breathing of the wind and rain. A monotonous ‘keerk, keerk, keerk’ sound began, somewhere to the west. It went on for a long time before I recognised it. At first I thought it was the squeak and puff of a mechanical water-pump, but when the sound came nearer I realised that it was a peregrine screeching. This saw-like rasping continued for twenty minutes, gradually becoming feebler and spasmodic. Then it stopped. The peregrine chased a crow through the misty fields and into the branches of a dead oak. As they swooped up to perch, twenty woodpigeons hurtled out of the tree as though they had been fired from it. The crow hopped and sidled along a branch till it was within pecking distance of the peregrine, who turned to face it, lowering his head and wings into a threatening posture. The crow retreated, and the hawk began to call again. His slow, harsh, beaky, serrated cry came clearly across to me through a quarter of a mile of saturated misty air. There is a fine challenging ring to a peregrine’s call when there are cliffs or mountains or wide river valleys to give it echo and timbre. A second crow flew up, and the hawk stopped calling. When both crows rushed at him, he flew at once to an overhead wire, where they left him alone.
He looked down at the stubble field in front of him, sleepy but watchful. Gradually he became more alert and intent, restlessly clenching and shifting his feet on the wire. His feathers were ruffled and rain-sodden, draggling down his chest like plaited tawny and brown ropes. He drifted lightly to the field, rose with a mouse, and flew to a distant tree to eat it. He came back to the same place an hour later, and again he sat watching the field; sold, hunched, and bulky with rain. His large head inclined downward, and his eyes probed and unravelled and sorted the intricate mazes of stubbled furrows and rank-spreading weeds. Suddenly he leapt forward into the spreading net of his wings, and flew quickly down to the field. Something was running towards the safety of the ditch at the side.
The hawk dropped lightly upon it. Four wings fluttered together, then two were suddenly still. The hawk flew heavily to the centre of the field, dangling a dead moorhen from his foot. It has wandered too far from cover, as moorhens so often do in their search for food, and it had forgotten the enemy that does not move. The bird out of place is always the first to die. Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost. The hawk turned his back to the rain, half spread his wings, and began to feed. For two or three minutes his head stayed down, moving slightly from side to side, as he plucked feathers from the breast of his prey. Then both head and neck moved steadily, regularly, up and down, as he skewered flesh with his notched and pointed bill and dragged lumps of it away from the bone by jerking his head sharply upward. Each time his head came up he looked quickly to left and right before descending again to his food. After ten minutes, this up and down motion became slower, and the pauses between each gulp grew longer. But desultory feeding went on for fifteen minutes more.
When the hawk was still, and his hunger apparently satisfied, I went carefully across the soaking wet grass towards him. He flew at once, carrying the remains of his prey, and was soon hidden in the blinding rain. He begins to know me, but he will not share his kill.
October 20th
The peregrine hovered above the river meadows, large and shining in dark coils of starlings, facing the strong south wind and the freshness of the morning sun. He circled higher, then stooped languidly down, revolving as he fell, his golden feet flashing through sunlight. He tumbled headlong, corkscrewing like a lapwing, scattering starlings. Five minutes later he lifted into air again, circling, gliding, diving up to brightness, like a fish cleaving up through warm blue water, far from the falling nets of the starlings.
A thousand feet high, he poised and drifted, looking down at the small green fields beneath him. His body shone tawny and golden with sunlight, speckled with brown like the scales of a trout. The undersides of his wings were silvery; the secondaries were shaded with a horseshoe pattern of blackish bars, curving inwards from the carpal joint to the axillaries. He rocked and drifted like a boat at anchor, then sailed slowly out onto the northern sky. He lengthened his circles into long ellipses, and swept up to smallness. A flock of lapwings rose below him, veering, swaying, breaking apart. He stooped between them, revolving down in tigerish spirals. Golden light leapt from his twisting talons. It was a splendid stoop, but showy, and I do not think he killed.
The river glinted blue, in green and tawny fields, as I followed the hawk along the side of the hill. At one o’clock he flew fast from the north, where gulls were following the plough. He landed on a post, mettlesome and wild in movement, with the strong wind ruffling the long fleece of feathers on his chest, yellow-rippling like ripe wheat. He rested for a moment, and then dashed forward, sweeping low across a field of kale, driving out woodpigeons. He rose slightly and struck at one of them, reaching for it with his foot, like a goshawk. But it was the merest feint, an idle blow that missed by yards. He flew on without pausing, keeping low, his back shining in the sun to a rich mahogany roan, the colour of clay stained with a deep rust of iron oxide.
Leaving the field, he swung up in the wing and glided over the river, outlined against sunlight. His wings hung loosely in the glide, with shoulders drooping; they seemed to project from the middle of his body, more like the silhouette of a golden plover than a peregrine. Normally the shoulders are so hunched, and point so far forward, that the length of body and neck in front of the wings is never apparent.
Beyond the river, he flew to the east, and