Christine's walking & birds blog

This isn't a bad spot to have lunch, especially on a fairly warm, sunny day with only a moderate wind.


Willow warblers were singing, redpolls checking me out, meadow pipits collecting food, and a male cuckoo had been answered by a female's bubbling call. I turned to see an orange butterfly (species unknown but possibly a painted lady) dancing towards me - and instead of veering away, it seemed to fly straight at me, and, as I instinctively ducked away, straight into the back of my head! I don't know where it went, but a bit later a similar butterfly came flying back up the hill past me, so I suppose it survived.

Anyway, that itself seems odd in retrospect - a sort of setting of the scene. Because next thing I was aware of was the repeated calling of a raven; and again looking round, I spotted it high up and also flying over me to the west. The sun was in my eyes, so I saw nothing else, and turned to watch the raven continue its flight. Then came a sudden, explosive "Whoosh!" that left me reeling and thinking wildly of military jets....but there in front of me, swooping down over the moorland beyond the trees, was a second raven pursuing a golden eagle. I'm pretty relieved they didn't fly into the back of my head!

The birds headed towards the hill in the picture, where the ravens flew around calling for some time. Then I spotted the eagle soaring and got one awful picture before it disappeared.


I don't know if the "Whoosh" was from the eagle's wings alone, or the eagle's and raven's combined - but they must have been very low when they went over me for the sound to have been that loud, and I can only regret that I didn't have the camera in my hand at the time. The moment went unrecorded and lives now only in my memory - and will do until that, too, disappears.