Of Mice and Kestrels

Courier Countryside Column for  4^th July.

Mowing with Mice and Kestrels

One man went to mow a meadow.  One man and a pair of kestrels.  It was quite exciting. (I know… I ought to get out more).  They were hovering just a few feet above me waiting to pounce on their prey.

Actually I felt a bit sorry for the moles and voles and field mice.  They’d been happily hidden in the long grass, well protected from aerial bombardment.  Now here I was cutting away their camouflage.  I’d noticed a few scurrying off as the tractor and topper passed by.  And then, suddenly a sizeable shadow appeared on the ground.  Possibly a creature out of Harry Potter I thought idly.  But as I glanced up, all I could see was what looked like a pigeon.

Regular readers may remember my inability to tell a pigeon from a kestrel when one tried a kamakazi run against my back door last autumn and broke its neck.

But although I may not know much about birds, I do know that pigeons seldom hover like hawks and so I looked again.  It was so close I could see the brown feathers on its back, its yellow talons and its hooked-beak face.  Then in an instant it dropped from the sky like a stone, grabbed a small bundle of brown fur, and rose again into the air, triumphant.  Moments later another identical bird appeared and the two of them hovered and dived as I drove up and down.

It certainly cheered up a dullish task.  I love driving the tractor, but mowing is rather repetitive. It needed doing though.  As you read this a few hundred people will be in the field chilling to the sounds of our “SOL Party” mini festival.  It’s now in its eighth year so I’ve got the organisation down to a fine art – which is to say that out of utter chaos generally comes some semblance of order.  Although it’s for members only it is possible to join up at the gate, so if you fancy coming check it out on Facebook or via Google.

Now, next job is to send the application to register the tractor back to the DVLA.  Again. The helpful people at Zetor in Coventry checked with head office in the Czech Republic and established it was manufactured in 1974.  But I’m not convinced even that evidence will be enough to satisfy the Swansea bureaucrats.