An hour later, there was panic again to the south and west. Plover and gulls spiralled above, blackbirds scolded, cockerels called from farms half a mile apart. The peregrine drifted down to the dead oak to perch, and the calling birds were silent. He rested, preened, and slept for a while, then flew across the open fields north of the river. Tractors were ploughing, and hundreds of gulls were scattered on the black-brown earth, like white chalk. A few sere stubbles still shine between the crinkled darkness of the ploughlands, but the elms are bare, and the poplars tattered yellow. Beagles were silently webbing out on to the wet surface of the fields. Huntsmen and followers were still and waiting. The hare was an acre away, sitting boldly in a furrow, big slant eyes shining in the sun, long ears bending and listening to the wind. The falcon flew up, and hovered above the hare. A distant shot made her flinch and lose height, as though she had been hit. She dropped down, and flew fast and low across the fields. I have never seen a hawk fly lower. Where the headland grass was long, she brushed it with her wings as she passed over. She was hidden by every dip and undulation of the ground. She disappeared along ditches, fanning the long grass outward, flying with her wings bent up, so that the keel of her breast-bone sheared the grass or skimmed an inch above the ground. Suddenly she seemed to fly straight into the furrows. There was no perching place within a quarter of a mile of the spot where she vanished, but I could not find her again, though I diligently quartered every field. Subtle as a harrier, soft-winged as an owl, but flicking along at twice their easy speed, she was as cunning as a fox in her use of cover and camouflage. She clings to the rippling fleece of the earth as the leaping hare cleaves to the wind.
All the gulls left the fields and spiralled silently away to the south. Cinctures of golden plover glittered round the clear zenith of the ice-blue sky. The sun was free of the mist at last, the rising north wind very cold. Beagles had scented the hare and were streaming over the leaf-stained plough, the hunt running behind, and the horn sounding. The tiercel circled low to the north, looking like a tawny kite cut from the earth beneath him, yellow as stubble, barred with dark brown. He rose slowly, and drifted down wind. The falcon flew up to join him, and they circled together, though not in the same direction. He moved clockwise, she anti-clockwise. Their random curving paths twined and intersected, but never matched. As they came nearer to the river, where I was standing, they quickly rose higher. Both were burnished by sunlight to a warm red-gold, but the falcon had browner plumage and was less luminous. They sailed overhead, three hundred feet up, canting slowly round on still and rigid wings, the tiercel thirty feet above the falcon. They stared down at me, with their big heads bent so far under that they appeared small and sunken between the deep arches of their wings. With feathers fully spread, and dilated with the sustaining air, they were wide, thick-set, cobby-looking hawks. The thin, intricate mesh of pale brown and silver-grey markings overlaying the buff surfaces of their underwings contrasted with the vertical mahogany-brown streaks on the deep amber yellow of their chests. Their clenched feet shone against the white tufts of their under-tail coverts. The bunched toes were ridged and knuckled like golden grenades.
They moved to the south of the river, and red-legged partridges began calling. Each hawk swung up into the wind, poised briefly, then drifted down and around in a long sweeping circle. Twice the tiercel swooped playfully at the falcon, almost touching her as he flicked past. He was the shorter in length by two to three inches, and the lighter in build, with relatively longer wings and tail. He had grace and slender strength, she power and solidity. As they dwindled higher, and farther to the south, perspective flattened their circles down to ellipses, and then to straight lines, gliding incisively to and fro across the sky. Their course seemed curiously inevitable, as though they were moving on hidden wires, or following some familiar pathway through the air. It is this beautiful precision, this feeling of pre-ordained movement, that makes the peregrine so exciting to watch.
Now the tiercel drew steadily away from the falcon, rising to the east, while she curved round to the west, and kept lower. Between circles she stayed motionless in the wind. From one of these pitches she turned away as usual, then slanted downwards. Something contained and menacing in her movement made me realise at once that she was going to stoop. She swept down and round in a spiral, wings half bent back, glancing down through the air, smoothly and without haste, at a forty-five degree angle. In this first long curving fall she slowly revolved her body on its axis, and just as the full turn was completed, she tilted over in a perfect arc and poured into the vertical descent. There was a slight check, as though some tenuous barrier of unruly air had been forced through; then she dropped smoothly down. Her wings were now flung up and back and bending inwards, quivering like fins in the gale that rushed along her tapering sides. They were like the flights of an arrow, rippling and pluming above the rigid shaft. She hurled to earth; dashed herself down; disappeared.
A minute later she rose unharmed, but without prey, and flew off to the south. Against blue sky, white cloud, blue sky, dark hills, green fields, brown fields, she had flashed lightly, shone darkly, wheeling and falling. And suddenly the cold, breath-catching air seemed very clear and sweet. The calling of small birds blended with the chiming bark of the beagles and the thudding away of the hunted hare. It streamed through a hedge and flung into the river, splashing in like a spadeful of brown earth. It swam to the far bank, and limped away to safety.
Where the tiercel still circled to the east, the sky was drifted with gulls and plover and curlew. The sharp glinting speck of the hawk faded slowly out above the hills, sweeping majestically towards the sea. The alarmed birds descended, and the great flight was over.
I followed the falcon, and found her again at half past three. Smoked out by dense clouds of starlings, she flew from the ash tree by ford lane pond and flickered low across fields where tractors were working and sugar beet was being cut and carted. Where the ground had been cleared, hundreds of gulls and lapwings were feeding; I lost the hawk among them as they rose. Ten minutes later she flew north-east, passing high towards the river, black against the lemon-yellow sky. She veered to the east, flying higher and faster, as though she had sighted prey.
The beagles are going home along the small hill lanes, the huntsmen tired, the followers gone, the hare safe in its form. The valley sinks into mist, and the yellow orbital ring of the horizon closes over the glaring cornea of the sun. The eastern ridge blooms purple, then fades to inimical black. The earth exhales into the cold dusk. Frost forms in hollows shaded from the afterglow. Owls wake and call. The first stars hover and drift down. Like a roosting hawk, I listen to silence and gaze into the dark.
November 18th
In the morning I walked east along the sea-wall, from the estuary to the sea. The water was pale grey and white under high cloud. It became seamed and veined with blue as the sky cleared and the sun came out. Waders, gulls and rooks fed by the tide-line. Bushes near the wall were full of larks and finches. Three snow buntings ran over the white shingle and sand, like waders, unwilling to fly, brown and white as the sand beneath them. When they ran on to darker ground, they flew at once, calling. Their long white-barred wings flashed up into sunlight, their hard, pure calls chimed faintly down.
All morning, I had the wary, uneasy feeling that comes when a hawk is near. I felt that he was hidden just beyond sight; in time and distance barely outpacing me, always dropping below the horizon as I moved up over the curve of the flat green land. By one o’clock I was heading south, and the sun was dazzling. Suddenly I seemed to be walking away from the hawk instead of towards it. I went down into the fields and across to the estuary again, not thinking, moving only on the rim of thought, content to see and absorb the day. Turning through the hedge-gap, I surprised a wren. It trembled on its perch in an agony of hesitation, not knowing whether