The firm thwack of bloody nature

It could have been a sparrowhawk, but people have seen a kestrel about. It wasn’t a red kite, even though there are now a number of pairs in our valley.

I was awoken in the country three weekends ago by a banging on the bedroom window – a sharp thwack-thwack on the glass. I peered behind the drawn blind and there was the telltale evidence: blood and smeared mud on the glass. Heavens! What was it?

I went back to bed. Thwack! Thwack! I peered again. This time there he was, actually sitting on the old brick ledge with his back against the glas, a mottled brown feathered back up against the glass. Small head, hooked bill. But what was he doing?

Back to bed. 6.00am. Bloody bird (literally)! Thwack! Bang! Thwack! This time I caught him at it, smashing the body of a field mouse against the glass, literally pulverising it.

Was there a nest nearby? Young to be fed broken bits of fieldmouse? Later, when he’d gone, I found a dead fieldmouse lying feet in the air, dead on the sill.

I was born in the country, am a part-time country bumpkin, happier in a week that ends there than when it doesn’t. But that doesn’t blunt the sharp encounter with brutal mother nature.

I am seeing more dead badgers than ever in the country roadside gutters. Humans are going to gas them in Wales. We don’t have any cows in our valley, just sheep, so I haven’t heard they will gas any.

Last weekened, thwacks again – but on downstairs window. I’m going to capture it on my camera. I open the blind, scaring a jackdaw, flapping away across the garden.

Dammit, I know the original miscreant was a mottle brown, and smaller. Have I been dreaming? Or have I witnessed a kestrel doing something kestrels don’t do?  They normally don’t like proximity to human housing.

Or was it a sparrowhawk anyway? Or was I deluded, and there was a kestrel on my sill and the jackdaw was doing the thwacking elsewhere. I have the dead mouse for evidence. But…