Dr Who Brings New Vistor to Our Garden
We were watching Dr Who on Saturday night when suddenly a small bird seemed to fall out of the sky on the edge of our patio, only about 8 feet away from where we were sitting.(You need to know that our TV is just to one side of the French windows onto our back garden.) This was immediately followed by a magnificent peregrine falcon, which pounced on the stunned bird and then posed for a few seconds before taking off with the blue tit in its talons.
It must have slightly missed its attack on the blue tit in the air and just knocked it to the ground. Since we started maintaining the garden organically, we've had a huge increase in the birds we see, as well as hedgehogs and frogs. (We do the annual RSPB garden birds survey, and saw 0 birds the first year we were here, and 43 this January; our species count of birds we have ever seen here is up to about 20.) But this was the first time we'd seen a peregrine in the garden. It was just not long enough to take a photo.
I know that many people find the activities of predatory birds where they can be seen to be distasteful and upsetting, but we just found it fascinating and awe-inspiring. Falcons are such beautiful birds! And it's much more "natural" than having birds attacked by the neighbours' cats.
It must have slightly missed its attack on the blue tit in the air and just knocked it to the ground. Since we started maintaining the garden organically, we've had a huge increase in the birds we see, as well as hedgehogs and frogs. (We do the annual RSPB garden birds survey, and saw 0 birds the first year we were here, and 43 this January; our species count of birds we have ever seen here is up to about 20.) But this was the first time we'd seen a peregrine in the garden. It was just not long enough to take a photo.
I know that many people find the activities of predatory birds where they can be seen to be distasteful and upsetting, but we just found it fascinating and awe-inspiring. Falcons are such beautiful birds! And it's much more "natural" than having birds attacked by the neighbours' cats.