He drops like a brick, 400 feet straight to earth

The old hen blackbird brought both her families of youngsters into the garden but they have now scarpered: juveniles go down to Devon and on into France while many parents stay at home.

She had three layings, a total of 12 eggs. First and third were successful, both in the same nest. The second clutch was laid in a new nest she built on the other side of the house, the side where the jays feel safe. They got the eggs as soon as the clutch was complete. They are not daft,

I suppose the jays are tame as far as jays can get used to humans in a wood which is heavily shot through for the whole of the winter. My wife would shoot the jays herself if she knew how to use a gun but I just let them get on with their natural predatory habits, as I am never bothered by the activities of the ‘holy hawks’, the cathedral peregrines, as my friend the village blacksmith calls them.

Peregrines take woodcock and teal, godwits and redshank, from Chichester harbour and good luck to them. They sometimes patrol over this house, very high up, speeding like boomerangs across the clouds, and of course they hunt not just in the dusk but at night too with a little light from the stars or a moon.

But they have not yet got ‘my’ woodcock, which flight out of the wood at dusk, a minute earlier until the new year, then a minute later each evening.

When you live in the middle of a wood, the birds and animals become part of your social round.

Today ten blue tits are dependent on us, also eight chaffinches, three blackbirds, as well as various great tits, marsh tits, cole tits, robins and two nuthatches. I suppose the sparrowhawk is as well. She pays a visit but only once a month, a shadow that clutches a food parcel of feathers and flesh and bone, leaving a wandering feather on the air like a visiting card.

If she gets my old hen blackie and the trusting tit, I would have to say good luck to her. She is as much a part of the garden and the sky as all the others.

If there were no sparrowhawks I would miss those thrilling freefalls her mate performs for her benefit during the spring.

He drops like a brick, 400 feet straight into the earth it seems: a meteoritic plunge that fair makes you exclaim with amazement. A few feet from destruction he stops and stares at her from his perch with the wildest devil eyes you’ll see in nature.

He might need an old hen blackbird for fuel so I can hardly grumble.