Every year in the UK the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds conducts a census of garden birds, known as the “Great Garden Bird Watch”. Volunteers are invited to spend an hour recording the birds observed in their gardens, and to report this to the society. It is (I gather) a very useful means of keeping some kind of check on those species that are thriving and those that are declining. I have taken part in this event for a good many years now, and at 9.00 this morning I settled in for my session, equipped with a sheet of notepaper and a pair of binoculars.
It was quite a busy period out there, with rarely any time in which no birds were visible. There were some pleasant surprises (a jay) and some curious omissions (no robins). I think that I recorded a good dozen species in my hour of observation. At the end of my time on watch I found myself thinking, rather predictably, about the beauty of birds and how dull the garden would be without them. It all felt very harmonious.
Not long afterwards I glanced out of the same window and caught sight of an unusual light-coloured patch on the lawn. I thought st first that it must be leaves or the petals of some flower, but immediately grasped that the colour was wrong for the first, and the season was wrong for the second. As I watched something moved in the middle of this patch, and I realised that it was a bird.
It didn’t take long for me to work out what had happened. It was a sparrow hawk that had just killed a collared dove, and was in the process for plucking off its feathers. After a few minutes it picked up its prey and flew off to some other place in the neighbourhood to enjoy its meal.
Quite suddenly I found myself entertaining quite a different view of what “Nature” might involve.