Nature, red in tooth and claw

I may have mentioned this before but although our new place(*) doesn't have a very large garden, it does have a lot of land behind it that belongs to other people, and that land is filled with trees of various ages and types. As a result we enjoy the presence of a great many birds (mainly magpies it has to be said - at least a dozen of them - with a few woodpigeons), a couple of squirrels and around half a dozen neighbourhood cats.

With all this wildlife going on things can occasionally be a little raucous, especially when the magpies get excited, but I never expected to have a close encounter with a kill.

Our study window overlooks the back garden, and I was sitting at my desk an hour ago with one curtain drawn against the sun when something hit the window with a loud thud. The windows are not that clean so I was surprised a bird had flown into them, but that's what it sounded like. Jumping out of my seat and pulling back the curtain, I was in time to see a flurry of feathers tumble off the edge of the conservatory roof below and land on the neighbour's lawn.

Far from being stunned, this flurry of feathers continued to flurry, and pretty soon resolved itself into a wood pigeon and a sparrowhawk. The hawk must have caught the pigeon in full flight, lost control and hit my window. The pigeon was putting up a game struggle (haha! "game" struggle, geddit?) trying to escape, but the really remarkable thing was the reaction of the magpies. Whether they were attracted by the prospect of an easy lunch, or just ganging up on the hawk for their own mutual protection I don't know, but four or five of them landed on the lawn in a circle around the hawk, who stood with one claw on the pigeon and faced off the magpies with a fabulous display of beakmanship.

After what seemed an age but must only have been a few seconds I kicked myself for not thinking of my camera, but by the time I had it decased, switched on, aimed and focussed the hawk had disappeared, leaving only the woodpigeon struggling in the ditch at the edge of the lawn. It was clearly in distress and I knew it wouldn't last long. The shock of an encounter like this is more often than not enough to finish them off, whether they have suffered any physical injury or not, and sure enough within the space of a few minutes it had ceased to be.

* We've been here 5 months now. I wonder how long it'll be before I stop calling it "the new place"?