Despite spending at least two hours outdoors on most days, close meetings with nature are actually quite thin on the ground. There is the odd distant view, a brief flicker at the edge of sight, usually gone before my patience can catch up.
My bird identification skills are basic, but even I know this much. A bird that is not fleeing nor perched, but hanging in the air, is almost certainly hunting. That will be a kestrel. When it hovers, it aims to stay fixed over one patch of ground, though the air itself refuses to behave. To manage this, the bird faces into the wind, turning itself into a neat little weather vane. Its head points straight at the source of the breeze, for those who enjoy such scraps of knowledge.
The kestrel is perhaps the best known of the few hawks still fairly common in Britain. Most people value it, yet a stubborn rump of so-called countryfolk still treat it as vermin, fit to be shot on sight. This is a poor show. The kestrel earns its keep by feeding almost entirely on field mice and voles, young rats, and large insects, especially beetles. It plays its part and then some, and deserves every scrap of protection we can offer
Among its dialect names, alongside such small joys as ‘windhover’ and ‘bell-hawk’, sits ‘wind-fucker’. So writes the dependable Robert Macfarlane1The word-hoard: Robert Macfarlane on rewilding our language of landscape. 27 Feb 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape. Once learned, this name will never be forgotten. It is hard not to notice, after that, a certain eager tremor in the hovering bird, as it hangs there, quivering against the wind.
- 1The word-hoard: Robert Macfarlane on rewilding our language of landscape. 27 Feb 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape
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