Brampton, Norfolk

  • A cold morning and a hungry hawk

    The frost lasted well into the morning. As I walked the (well wrapped) whippets along the railway line, a female Sparrowhawk leapt from the hedge. She carried a victim gripped in her talons and made her way to the relative sanctuary of the Blackthorns. We followed slowly and a hundred yards further on, she once again took flight. In that characteristic ground hugging way of theirs, she powered along before turning sharply through a narrow hedge gap and was gone. The colder weather nearly always brings with it closer encounters with predators. Driven by hunger they discard their innate caution and grab every opportunity, no matter how close to us. Further on, a smaller tiercel (male) Sparrowhawk swiftly leaves its vantage point in Bill’s front garden Cherry Tree and heads for the marshes. It is not only the Blue Tits that bird tables attract.

     

  • Chasing comets

    A crystal clear Norfolk over the village gave us a chance to do a bit of comet spotting. Comet Lovejoy sails high in the southern evening sky. We returned to the best viewing platform- the old railway embankment. For the last few nights the Comet has been climbing alongside the constellations Orion and Taurus, but it was really only last night that it escaped the polluting skyglow from Norwich. A short search revealed it as a greenish glowing smudge to the west of that jewel-like cluster of stars, the Pleiades or Seven-Sisters. As we watched the frost nipped our fingers, but we felt some connection, no matter how distant, with cold space.

     

  • Noises in the night

    The feeling of being watched was never so tangible as it was yesterday evening. The sky was partly overcast. The primeval sound of a deer bark echoed around us. A repeated call, a call of the Muntjac Deer was the only noise that assailed us. It circled around us in that way that convinces you that he was keeping one beady eye on our location. Still calling, he crossed Digby’s garden and made for the copse – or so the calls from the invisible buck seemed to tell us. We walked on, blind to the movements in the dark.

     

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