The Peregrine by J. A. Baker

The Peregrine by J. A. Baker

Author:J. A. Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-03-04T16:00:00+00:00


December 15th

The warm west gale heaved and thundered across the flat river plain, crashed and threshed high its crests of airy spray against the black breakwater of the wooded ridge. The stark horizon, fringing the far edges of the wind, was still and silent. Its clear serenity moved back before me; a mirage of elms and oaks and cedars, farms and houses, churches, and pylons silver-webbed like swords.

At eleven o’clock the tiercel peregrine flew steeply up above the river, arching and shrugging his wings into the gale, dark on the grey clouds racing over. Wild peregrines love the wind, as otters love water. It is their element. Only within it do they truly live. All wild peregrines I have seen have flown longer and higher and further in a gale than at any other time. They avoid it only when bathing or sleeping. The tiercel glided at two hundred feet, spread his wings and tail upon the billowing air, and turned down wind in a long and sweeping curve. Quickly his circles stretched away to the east, blown out elliptically by the force of the wind. Hundreds of birds rose beneath him. The most exciting thing about a hawk is the way in which it can create life from the still earth by conjuring flocks of birds into the air. All the feeding gulls and lapwings and woodpigeons went up from the big field between the road and the brook as the hawk circled above them. The farm seemed to be hidden by a sheet of white water, so close together were the rising gulls. Dark through the white gulls the sharp hawk dropped, shattering them apart like flinging white foam. When I lowered my binoculars, I saw that the birds around me had also been watching the hawk. In bushes and trees there were many sparrows, starlings, blackbirds and thrushes, looking east and steadily chattering and scolding. And all the way along the lanes, as I hurried east, there were huddles of small birds lining the hedges, shrilling their warning to the empty sky.

As I passed the farm, a flock of golden plover went up like a puff of gunsmoke. The whole flock streamed low, then slowly rose, like a single golden wing. When I reached ford lane, the trees by the pond were full of woodpigeons. None moved when I walked past them, but from the last tree of the line the peregrine flew up into the wind and circled east. The pigeons immediately left the trees, where they had been comparatively safe, and flew towards North Wood. They passed below the peregrine. He could have stooped at them if he had wished to do so. Woodpigeons are very fast and wary, but like teal they sometimes have a fatal weakness for flying towards danger instead of away from it.

In long arcs and tangents the hawk drifted slowly higher. From five hundred feet above the brook, without warning, he suddenly fell. He simply stopped, flung his wings up, dived vertically down.



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