Bird Of/With Prey

It was pouring and very windy when I got up so I resolved to shoot one of my spider housemates for #Arachtober. I collected a cellar spider from the corner of the garden room and photographed it in a cut-glass brandy ballooon. Once the photoshoot was over I put it back with its mate.

As it happened the storm went though very quickly and we've had a lovely day. I watched this kestrel hovering from the White Hide at Amwell Nature Reserve and got an image of it stooping. My pic shows it flying off with its hapless prey. This is a first for me, it's not a good pic, I wish I had been closer.

Today's poem is Glanmore Sonnets VIII by Seamus Heaney.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48395/glanmore-sonnets

The sonnets are about married love. SH wrote them in the 70s whilst living in The Republic with his wife and children. He had fled The Troubles and felt guilty about it. Magpies are very jerky. He mentions Les Landes, which I remember from geography at school, a weird area so boggy that people used to walk on stilts. A woman rocking just a bit too much, a Down's Syndrome affected child in her lap. His imaginings and memories are too much, he needs to make love with his wife as therapy.