Raptors

by James Macdonald Lockhart

  From now on, this is my routine. I slip into the hedge at the end of the track while it is still dark and watch the light rinse the field. Who is here? First up, a roe deer and her well-grown calf. They are wading back through the high dewy grass towards the wood. The calf is skittish, all sprints and feints around its mother. It is September and their pelts are a deep red, turmeric and umber colour. Next come the kestrels, a pair, flying low across the field, chittering, yattering, chasing each other. Then pigeon after pigeon, breaking from the wood at speed. Each sudden burst of pigeon briefly holds the possibility of a hawk hidden in its shape. But it never is, and when it comes the hawk is altogether something else. Different shape, different poise, different bent: hawk, it could not be anything else. The sparrowhawk lands on the dead branch of an ash tree on the edge of the wood, quivers there. Straight away, like a conjuror’s hat trick, another hawk is pulled out of the wood and lands beneath the first. When it lands it tips the other hawk from its perch and then the pair of them are off, skittering, chasing after each other through the trees.

  The next half-hour is a whirl of hawks, flickering, twisting, speeding through the trees around the edge of the wood, careering through the branches. Glimpses of them: racing, swerving through the foliage, dark long-winged shapes. Here they come again, one after the other, popping out of the wood to perch together in the ash tree. But too restless to stay there for long, they are off again skidding through the trees. They move so quickly it’s hard to get the colours of their plumage right but the impression is of a mostly brown dorsal and a pale breast. I also find it hard to judge if they are a pair, a male and female. I presume they are and that I have just caught them emerging from their roost in the wood. But, again, the speed at which they chase after each other makes it hard to appreciate the size difference between the sexes. I notice, when the birds are perched, how they blend in amongst the brown clumps of dead ash key seeds, I keep mistaking the seeds for hawks.

  A kestrel comes in. He is much stiffer in flight than the hawks, sharper, narrower-winged, nothing of the hawks’ fluidity. The sharp angles of his wings make him seem a little larger than the sparrowhawks. The kestrel lands at the top of the ash tree and his tail bobs up behind when he lands, as if the action of the tail balances his landing. Immediately the hawks join him, shuffling around on the lower branches. For a while I watch a laddering of raptors: kestrel – then hawk – then hawk below.

  The sparrowhawk is not a specialist. It does not rely on a particular prey species, as the honey buzzard does with wasps or the kestrel with field voles. It is, however, an avian specialist, as its diet is almost entirely made up of small to medium-sized birds. Some small mammals are taken, young rabbits early in the season, field voles especially in plague years, bank voles in the woods. But live birds predominate. It is also, like its larger accipiter relative, the goshawk, a woodland specialist, able to pursue prey at speed through the narrow airspace of a wood. A wide variety of bird species are predated: everything from wren (rarely) to woodpigeon (often). But locally, certain species will provide the bulk of the sparrowhawk’s diet. Fledgling songbirds in June and July are crucial. Sparrowhawks synchronise their nesting to coincide with the availability of songbird fledglings, and without this glut of vulnerable prey in the summer months the hawk’s ability to breed successfully would be severely impaired.

  Important prey species in the British Isles include starling, chaffinch, song thrush, blackbird and woodpigeon, especially in spring and summer; fieldfare and redwing in winter. Birds of deep cover like the wren and blue tit are far less vulnerable to sparrowhawk predation than more conspicuous species of open spaces like the robin and redwing. Vocal, displaying songbirds in springtime are especially vulnerable. Male hawks take a higher proportion of smaller prey species than the females. The males also tend to hunt in more concentrated woodland; female hawks tend to range further afield and hunt in more open landscapes.

  The sparrowhawk is not the efficient predator of garden birds we tend to assume it is; its prey species are efficient at avoiding it. Alarm calls warn of a hawk’s approach and give the chance for smaller birds to seek cover – about three seconds is all they need to make their escape. With the slightest head-start most birds will escape, as the hawk cannot follow them into dense foliage. A woodpigeon can outfly a sparrowhawk with relative ease. Once its prey has put sufficient distance between itself and the hawk, the sparrowhawk does not waste its energy and, unlike a merlin, usually gives up the pursuit. The hawk’s agility does not always mean it can outmanoeuvre smaller, more agile prey. Starvation is a major cause of mortality for sparrowhawks, especially between March and April, the hungry gap, when winter migrants have left these islands and summer migrants have not yet arrived.

  Sparrowhawks can be a major cause of mortality for certain birds during certain narrow windows in the year. These windows are defined by the stage of abundance and vulnerability of the prey. So fledglings, when they have just left the nest, are at their most vulnerable to predation. Despite this heavy predation, as Ian Newton explains in his great study of the raptor, there is no evidence that sparrowhawks have any long-term effect on the size of their prey’s population. In other words, if the hawks were removed from the environment, there would be no noticeable increase in their prey species. In the absence of their major predator, other mortality or ‘controlling’ factors, starvation in particular, would come into play on these birds. The best evidence for this occurred when sparrowhawks were removed from large parts of the British countryside in the late 1950s and early 1960s through poisoning by organochlorine pesticides. During this period, despite the absence of their major predator, the songbird population remained the same. Neither, when sparrowhawks returned to the ecosystem, was there any noticeable decline in their prey species.

  To catch its prey the sparrowhawk relies on stealth and surprise. It uses obstacles, hedges and walls for instance, to conceal itself, at the last minute rushing up over a hedge to attack prey on the other side. It flies as close to the ground as possible and conceals its approach by flying, when conditions allow, with the sun behind it. I have seen a sparrowhawk fly so low up a road in front of me there seemed to be no visible gap between bird and tarmac.

  The reason you rarely see sparrowhawks is because to hunt – to survive – they rely on concealment. Sparrowhawks can (more rarely in Britain than on mainland Europe) suffer predation themselves, so concealment also helps to negate this risk (goshawks, peregrines and tawny owls have all been known to kill sparrowhawks). If a hawk perched on the top of a tree like a kestrel does, every songbird in the neighbourhood would yell: Hawk! The sparrowhawk must always be just out of sight; that is where you will find them.

  I am in the hedge before dawn. I’m glad of the track, the way it allows me to avoid the wood, to slip into the hedge without waking the wood. I’m just in time to catch the change of shift: a muntjac crossing the field, heading back to the wood; crows and jackdaws, coming the other way, pour from the trees like black smoke.

  The early morning soundscape (in this order): tawny owl, the screech-echo of a pair; jackdaw chatter; a moorhen’s alarm from the moat behind the track; a raven’s croak; pheasant (very loud inside the wood) sets off another pheasant a whole field away; a buzzard calling on the soar; a magpie’s rattle … Next comes the staggered departure from the roost: crows and jackdaws the first to leave in their tatterdemalion flocks, magpies in their slipstream, then the kestrel, keeking, wide awake.

  The dawn itself is split between the buzzard-light, which is a murky pre-dawn light, and the hawk-light, which comes soon after dawn. The buzzard is always out of the roost before the hawk, hunting when there seems barely enough light to see in. It is only when the light has really broken through, cleaned and sharpened the edges of the wood, that the sparrowhawk comes out of the trees from its roost, silent, quick, broad-winged. Sometimes a single hawk, sometimes a pair, chasing each other low across the field, turning knots through one another, playful, sinuous
like otters. Usually just a fleeting glimpse: the hawk bursts out of the trees, shoots low across the field and is gone.

  But that brief glimpse is enough. I long for it, and long to get back to the hedge. Some mornings I do not see the hawks, but because they use the wood to roost, I often catch the birds when they depart at dawn. And so, over the weeks and months, I build up a store of hawk sightings, a steady accumulation of wonder. One morning I return to the hedge to find it has been cut right back by a tractor’s hedge cutter: it is almost unrecognisable, a shredded, splintered mess. I feel miserable and a little silly that I have become so possessive of a hedge. But I realise it will grow back and thicken up in the spring and there is still space for me to slot in and conceal my shape.

  There are some mornings when the wind seems to get inside the birds. Jackdaws are bundled out of the wood in erratic, swirling columns. Pigeons pour out of the trees in their hundreds. A red kite comes over high and fast through the dawn with the wind behind it. A tiny goldcrest is made larger – rounder – by the breeze puffing out its feathers.

  A hawk goes up from the wood, squabbles with a crow, then dives fast and steep back into the centre of the wood. Then she is climbing again, spinning up from the trees. She banks slowly around above the wood and out across the field. Another hawk joins her there and they reel together high above the village.

  Because I am so absorbed in watching the hawks, I do not notice that a deer has walked right up to me. So when I look down, I am astonished to see her: a diminutive muntjac, just three feet away, her black eyes staring at me. I freeze, but the deer hasn’t got a hold of me, hasn’t seen me properly. The hedge, despite its crew cut, seems to still disguise me. The muntjac ambles past; stiff, stumpy gait, lumpy brown coat. Then my scent pricks her: she kicks her hind feet up, and bucks away across the field, white rump flashing as she goes. When she reaches the wood she slows to a trot, glances back, barks, then hurries on into the wood. For a while I can see her white tail signalling, like a light fading inside the trees.

  I leave the hedge and walk back along the muddy track. Blackbirds are out along the path, scraping through the leaf litter. A moorhen makes a dash for cover. Through the gate, turn right, and up the street. Coat off, kettle on, binoculars back in their case.

  Upstairs, on my desk, I keep a jar of feathers – kestrel, magpie, buzzard, pheasant – keepsakes from the fields and wood. My children also bring me feathers they have found, knowing that even a bedraggled pigeon feather fished from a drain will make me smile. The collection keeps growing; sometimes, when the light inside the room is thin and closing, it looks as if my desk has grown a wing.

  Through the window three magpies have lit up the pale winter lawn. In the branches of the apple tree – the old, gnarled Russet – a clump of mistletoe is a ball of green light. There is a faint hum inside the room; the fan on my laptop, which I barely notice, has noticed one of the feathers – a buzzard’s – and is breathing gently against it. The downy barbs around the feather’s quill shiver and lift.

  Bibliography

  I Hen Harrier

  Armstrong, Edward A. – The Folklore of Birds (Dover, 1970)

  Balfour, Edward – ‘Observations on the Breeding Biology of the Hen Harrier in Orkney’ (Bird Notes, 27, no. 6, 177–183, no. 7, 216–224, 1957)

  Barkham, Patrick – ‘The mystery of the missing hen harriers’ (Guardian, 13 January 2015)

  Berry, R. J. – Orkney Nature (T. & A. D. Poyser, 2000)

  Bevis, John – Direct from Nature: The Photographic Work of Richard and Cherry Kearton (Colin Sackett, 2007)

  Cuthbert, Olaf – Eddie: An Orkney Ornithologist Remembered (Felix Books, 2005)

  Eagle, Raymond – Seton Gordon: The Life and Times of a Highland Gentleman (Lochar, 1991)

  Fenton, Alexander – The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland (John Donald, 1978)

  Firth, John – Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish (W. R. Rendall, 1974)

  Gordon, Seton – Thirty Years of Nature Photography (Cassell, 1936)

  — ‘Bird Photography 70 Years Ago’ (Country Life Magazine, 8 April 1976)

  Hamerstrom, Frances – Harrier, Hawk of the Marshes: The Hawk that is Ruled by a Mouse (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986)

  Hedges, John W. – Isbister: A Chambered Tomb in Orkney (B.A.R. 115, 1983)

  — Tomb of the Eagles: A Window on Stone Age Tribal Britain (John Murray, 1987)

  Kearton, Richard – With Nature and a Camera (Cassell, 1902)

  Mackay Brown, George – An Orkney Tapestry (Quartet Books, 1978)

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  II Merlin

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  Lindsay, R. A., Charman, D. J., Everingham, F., O’Reilly, R. M., Palmer, M. A., Rowell, T. A., Stroud, D. A. (ed. Ratcliffe, D. A. and Oswald, P. H.) – The Flow Country: The Peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland (Nature Conservancy Council, 1988)

  Mabey, Richard – Home Country (Century, 1990, pp. 119–131, ‘Away Games’)

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  Stroud, David A., Reed, T. M., Pienkowski, M. W., Lindsay, R. A. (ed. Ratcliffe, D. A. and Oswald, P. H.) – Birds, Bogs and Forestry: The Peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland (Nature Conservancy Council, 1988)

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  — Merlins of the South-East Yorkshire Dales (Tarnmoor Publications, 2005)

  III Golden Eagle

  Campbell, Laurie and Dennis, Roy – Golden Eagles (Colin Baxter Photography, 1996)

  Gordon, Seton – Days with the Golden Eagle (Williams & Norgate, 1927)

  — The Golden Eagle: King of Birds (Collins, 1955)

  Harvie-Brown, J. A. and Buckley, T. E. – A Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides (David Douglas, 1888)

  Haworth, Paul F., Mcgrady, Michael J., Whitfield, D. Philip, Fielding, Alan H. and McLeod, David R. A. – ‘Ranging distance of resident Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) in western Scotland according to season and breeding status’ (Bird Study, 53, no. 3, 265–273, 2006)