Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
Raptors serve as an access point to nature for many and it’s no wonder when you watch their acrobatic manoeuvres in mid-air
Autumn is coming to the Galloway hills and summer’s birds are beginning to pack their bags. The swifts have already gone and the fields are being combed by teams of hooligan swallows. The little birds didn’t start to nest until June this year and have only managed two broods, but they have still been extremely productive. There are often gangs of more than 100 youngsters squalling over the farm in the evenings as they prepare to head south. Many of the less confident juveniles line up along the gates and fences as they wait to be fed. They have been badly harried by sparrowhawks and the yard reverberates in an uproar of protest when the hunters come pouncing out from the willow scrub to steal unwary youngsters.
Most ambushes are quickly resolved but I recently saw a sparrowhawk successfully pull off an extended pursuit on open ground. I thought that swallows were nimble enough to avoid most predators in a fair, open chase, but the well-grown youngster I watched was snatched out of the air after several tight corners and desperate jinks. Perhaps the conclusion was more a product of good luck than calculated strategy. I can’t help thinking that the sparrowhawk was more surprised than anyone by her success. The other swallows mobbed the victor relentlessly, and she was finally forced to retreat with her prey to the deep cover of the brambles.
It is hard to say how this thrilling spectacle compares with some other raptor highlights. I have been lucky this year with a few really wild encounters. It got off to a fine start when I accidentally flushed a snipe and saw it grasped from mid-air by a beautiful white hen harrier. Harriers are usually far too timid to hang around when a human is passing by but this bird seemed not to have noticed me and was blind to everything but the zigzagging snipe.
Pursuit and grab
The two birds collided about 200 yards away from me and I was able to watch the harrier’s yellow rat-trap feet reach from one side and grip the snipe as it flew. I’m much more used to seeing harriers hunting at a moderate height over deep vegetation and pouncing down like a cat on anything that flushes from low level, so this proactive pursuit and grab was totally new to me. Given that I had been responsible for flushing the snipe from some deep cover, I felt a little guilty to see it carried off.
Harriers are anxious, nervy birds and I waited for almost 20 minutes before the predator finally felt comfortable enough to start feeding. Contrary to high-profile publicity about the impending extinction of hen harriers in this country, they are some of the most common raptors we see in the winter, particularly in a good year for voles when you can reliably see a couple almost every day hunting alongside the kestrels.
The other contender for top raptor moment of the year so far was the distant and confusing sight of a merlin flaring and rushing around in a state of extreme excitement on the open hill. I could not make sense of the spectacle until I was less than 300 yards away, at which point I was able to focus my binoculars and get a clear look. The frantic movements were explained when I saw that the little hunter was pursuing some extremely delicate prey — moths, which had flown in a steady tide over the moor for a few days previously.
The falcon was simply capitalising on a natural surplus of food and it was a joy to see him eat several of the insects on the wing. He bent his head down to pick at his prey before rushing on to find more. Moths were taken to eat on a stack of peat that was drying in the breeze. When I went up to see the peat a few hours later, I found it littered with dismembered wings which had been expertly snipped off and allowed to fall into the heather. The joy of this encounter was the merlin’s sheer aerial mastery and his ability to pick individual insects out of the sky as if with a pair of tweezers.
We are lucky to have such a rich variety of raptors in Galloway and their behaviour never ceases to amaze. It is no wonder that birds of prey serve as an access point to nature for the general public; there is something universally appealing in their grace. I am devoted to game birds, but I can’t resist a pang of pleasure to see a hunting hawk or a plunging falcon.
“The bird seemed not to notice me and was blind to everything but the zigzagging snipe”
Patrick Laurie is a project manager at the Heather Trust. He has a particular focus on blackgrouse conservation and farms Galloway cattle in south-west Scotland.