Parting Gift

A visit to the orchard. We stopped briefly to check the empty hives are still sealed. I glanced up at the stag oak. Already on the wing and heading away from me, dropping to use the tree as a shield between us: a red kite. It was instantly clear what had happened. All the time I was busy with the hives, it had been sitting on the bare bough, watching me, well aware that I was distracted and ignorant of its presence. The instant my eyes swung towards it, it knew it would be seen. It decided the risk that I might be malevolent was not worth the benefit of staying in place and saving energy

You could certainly mount an argument that there are some evolved or learned responses at work, pre-determined and predictable, automatic and programmed. All I can say is that it does not feel that way. It feels like encountering an intelligence and a consciousness that is capable of forethought, prediction, strategy, tactics and decision-making

As it fell and glided out of sight, a single feather dropped from the place where it had been perched, spiralling downwards with aerodynamic perfection. A line of poetry in the sky. I saw it land on a hawthorn bush; a few shakes brought it to the ground. MrsM's sharp eyes saw others - I assume it is moulting season. What an intriguing variety from a single bird (I assume - the solid black one is particularly questionable). The one on the left is not folded over or damaged; the asymmetric shape and variation along its length are obviously there to serve a purpose - I guess something to do with airflow across its wing

We watched a rather odd Japanese film (Evil Does Not Exist), in which a young girl presents her grandfather with a feather she has found in the forest. He is grateful, saying he can use it to repair a harpsichord, as feathers are what is used to pluck the strings. This was news to me, but it seems to be based on fact

Kites were all but eradicated from England last century by gamekeepers and egg collectors. A 1990s repopulation scheme in the Chilterns, coupled with protected status, has been spectacularly successful. Spanish, and some Welsh, fledgings were released over a 3 or 4 year period, became established and started to breed and spread. They reached our spot on the Oxfordshire/Warwickshire border by early 2000's and are now so commonplace that we take them for granted a lot of the time, and are more excited by seeing a buzzard. We may not pay them all that much attention, but they watch us carefully