It is almost the shortest day. When I went out at half past seven to open the pop hole of the chicken house and sprinkle their morning treat of porridge oats and Value sultanas, the chickens were still lined up on their perch, and just looked at me through the windows. It was obviously too early and too dark for them to get up.
The remaining Christmas trees are meeting a certain amount of consumer resistance. One couple asked me if we would be cutting any more, which I took as a coded comment that they didn't like the ones we had. I explained that there probably wouldn't be any more, as I thought there weren't any more left to cut, a coded response that yes, I knew the trees were an odd looking lot but unfortunately they were the absolute last scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. Some people did buy trees, one man saying cheerfully that his tree only had one side, but he didn't want to go up the road and pay fifty pounds for one. My colleague sawed the bottom off a tree for someone dressed in full biking leathers, face piercings and skull necklace. I didn't nip out into the car park to see if he was actually going to drive away on a Harley-Davidson with the tree strapped to his back. I should have really.
A customer came to tell me that there was a sparrow hawk 'in your thing down there'. I went down to the bottom of the plant centre, and there was indeed a hawk flying around in the top half of the shade tunnel. The tunnel has a green netting roof, but open sides, and the bird could have flown straight out if it had come lower down, instead of which it was battering itself against the netting roof as it tried to fly upwards towards the sky, which it could see through the shade netting. Small birds have done the same thing in our conservatory at home, flying repeatedly into the transparent roof, and very difficult to remove they are too, but I've never had to deal with a hawk before, and didn't honestly know how I was going to get it out. I went into the tunnel from the other end, and walked towards the bird in the hope that it would fly away from me and find the end opening, but it went on flying into the roof, then flopped down on to a plant and fell on its back on the ground.
I picked it up, holding its wings against its body so that it couldn't flap. I don't know if that is the recommended way of handling a tired and frightened wild bird, but I thought that if it flapped in real panic it might injure itself, or I might drop it in surprise, or it might catch me in the eye. I put it down, the right way up, in the border outside the tunnel and suggested to the customer that the best thing now might be to leave it to recover. The owners don't have cats, and were out with the dogs, so it seemed a fairly safe bet just leaving it on the ground. I checked five minutes later and it had gone.
It was a very beautiful creature, with a lot of red in its colouring. It looked huge with its full wingspan extended, but tiny in my hands, no larger than a blackbird. I can identify a kestrel hovering because I know that is the only UK raptor that can hover, but I don't know much about the markings of hawks and haven't seen many close up. The Systems Administrator on hearing about it thought that it was almost certainly a kestrel and not a sparrowhawk, because sparrowhawks hunt among trees quite close to the ground, and shouldn't have had any difficulty finding their way out of the tunnel via the side openings. That sounds sensible to me, but having seen the bird ineffectually flying around in the tunnel, and then held it, I still couldn't tell you what species it was. The customer seemed relieved I'd rescued it. Compared to him I did have the strategic advantage that I was wearing gloves, and some people are squeamish about handling birds, which I can understand. Birds are very alien creatures close up, so bony and light, with scaly legs and strange eyes. Add talons and a hooked beak, and they aren't something you necessarily want to mess with.
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