Hobby that isn’t a fun pastime
Panicking swallows, swifts and martins had been hurled into a frenzy by the menacing presence of their deadliest foe.
Flying over a flooded gravel pit, desperately searching for food after their gruelling travels out of Africa, the migrant birds were already battling unseasonal early summer storms that made the task of picking off insects on the wing even more challenging. But then a sleek, intimidating shape suddenly turned their efforts into a fight for life.
By rights, the hobby falcon that had zoomed into their midst should also have been on a mission to find insects after its own epic journey from south of the Sahara. The hobby is a dextrous hunter, patrolling the skies and picking off calorie-rich hawker, darter and emperor dragonflies with sharp talons.
But this washout of a spring left large flying insects grounded and meant the starving falcon had to seek unseasonal fare.
Hobbies are the one predator with the deftness and speed to catch speedy swifts and swallows, but they normally resort to hunting young, inexperienced birds later in the season to feed their own offspring.
Long before I had caught sight of the hobby, I sensed its ominous presence.
House martins had sounded the alarm with their terrified calls, along with panicking lapwings, gulls and terns, all intent on locating the danger before it took them unawares.
Like a Spitfire of old, the falcon, with its gunmetal wings, made a series of passes and swoops into the melee, but was ultimately unsuccessful against canny adult birds with well-honed evasion tactics.
One of my favourite stories about the hobby is the way it inspired the name of the popular tabletop football game Subbuteo.
The scientific name of the hobby is Falco subbuteo, which loosely translates to small buzzard. When the game’s inventor was not granted the trademark for Hobby Football – his original name for the game – in the late 1940s, he turned to the falcon’s official title for an alternative.
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These starving falcons are now preying on swifts and swallows