Monday 10 October 2011

Peregrines at the Tate Modern and Other Bird Life

The birds on this blog page are one of the offered templates. I'm too lazy to customize, and I like the birds anyway. Birds are a big part of our life: with feeders in the backyard we have all the garden birds of England: great tits, blue tits, coal tits, robins, wren (occasionally), greenfinches, bullfinches, goldfinches, dunnocks, blackbirds, ring-necked doves, song thrush (rarely these days), sometimes a fly-through of long-tailed tits, and jackdaws and woodpigeons. The last two are unwelcome guests as they hoover through the feed too fast. But I don't mind fattening up the woodpigeons – we might have to make a meal of them some day the way the economy is going.

The birds seem to like it when we come to the table to eat. Perhaps they can see us through the patio door windows, but our presence must be reassuring because when we eat, the birds come in to eat, too. Maybe they think we keep away the neighborhood cats, who have at times been found to be lurking in the nearby bushes.

A recent trip to the Tate Modern was to see the peregrines that often roost on the tower. The RSPB* had set up a viewing stand with two tripod binoculars. The peregrines are one of several pairs now nesting around London and like high ledges on which to roost. The day we saw the peregrine, it looked like a feathery humpty dumpty – just a half-oval shape plunked on the ledge. Not the regal hunting bird I was expecting. Still, it was nice to spot it.

A friend with a very black eye thought he looked like a peregrine with its black face mask. Do you think so, too?

*The Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds

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