One of DN's favourite questions at the moment is 'were you expecting that?' The question usually follows him blowing a loud raspberry in your direction, and your answer has to be 'no. I wasn't expecting that'.
Yesterday evening I saw something in my garden which I really was not expecting. It was just before 9.00 pm and I'd gone out into the kitchen to make myself a cup of Rooibos tea before settling down to watch Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'River Cottage Spring.' It was a nice evening and dusk was not even really beginning as yet. I wandered over to the kitchen window to have a look out and was amazed to see a large-ish hawk sitting on the grass totally engrossed in tearing something fleshy to shreds. I went to fetch my camera and did take a few photos but I was too far away and the light was just too dark to get a decent picture. I had wondered why the lovely robin, who sits on the top-most branch of the pine tree in our garden and signs his little heart out every evening was totally silent yesterday - now I know why.
I do wonder where the hawk had come from, although we are not that far from open countryside (less than five minutes in a car), and presumably this one had spotted something worth nabbing in our garden. When I told Mum about it she said having a hawk about will keep the mice down (what it was eating last night could well have been a mouse) and that it will probably return again. If it's going to keep the mouse population down then it is more than welcome to treat our garden as an eat-all-you-want buffet for as long as it likes.
Ohh, hope it wasn't the robin. Hawks are fantastic though aren't they, what a sight, albeit a bit gruesome!
Posted by: asti | 06/19/2008 at 09:21 PM