Peregrines called "hawks" in a book (4 Viewers)

[Richard Prior]

Dykes are man made flood protections, so an earth or concrete embankment, the seaward side would have salty, brackish or fresh water at its base, depending on how high recent tides would've been I suppose.
Regarding him flushing the partridges, I personally doubt the author would be deliberately making them fly given his benevolent attitude to nature.
Mumbling sea, he talks of the sea dwindling out, so slowly receding, if close to the water's edge there is a sort of gentle sound of the bubbles and water moving slowly across the mud which the author describes as mumbling, ie talking under one's breath or incoherently.
Red Poll cattle as Qwerty says.
I've never heard of 'a leicestershire' as a noun , when describing a person or something from that county could you say, eg, "she was a Leicestershire lass", ie, a girl from Leicestershire, so an adjective not a noun.
The Mistle Thrush, like the Fieldfare can be very brave and aggressive towards birds of prey so this behaviour is not unusual.
Green corn, I imagine it's a field of winter wheat.
Mid - stream is a term used here to indicate the deepest part of a tidal channel, ie a safe place for large ships to be moored without risking grounding when the tide goes out. It's nothing to do with a stream in this case!

 

[PYRTLE]

Seems quite certain he's talking about cattle: "The Red Poll Cow is one of the traditional native British dual purpose breeds (beef & milk). It is naturally polled (hornless). It thrives on low input management systems as it is an efficient converter of forage requiring little or no additional feed." From Red Poll Cattle Society

King Charles III has a herd of these on his estate at Sandringham, a wonderful sight when they are turned out during the summer and when driving along the beautifully kept roads running through. He introduced them several years ago as the then Prince of Wales, having to convince his parents of the benefits of the breed.

 

[nartreb]

"Dyke" shares its origin with "ditch" and originally meant a linear excavation or trench. The familiar meaning of a built-up pile of earth/rocks/etc (as would naturally be produced by piling the excavated material along one side of a ditch) came later.
In the southern part of England, I'm informed, the word "ditch" came into widespread use for a trench. By default, this left "dike" to refer primarily to an earthwork or dam (particularly for the purpose of retaining floodwater - presumably with influence from Dutch). Further north, meanwhile, "dike" was more likely to retain its original meaning of a trench.
Some of Baker's quotes clearly are using "dike" to mean a body of water, as when referring to peregrines bathing.

re flushing partridges - it's unlikely that Baker had seen them. He may have been investigating why the falcon was hovering, so perhaps he suspected they were there. The term "flushed" implies that they were hidden until they took flight. Often, partridges stay motionless until you are about to step on them. Even that close, partridges can be incredibly hard to notice.

"leicestershires of swift green light" - This is poetry; it's quite hard to assign particular meanings to individual words. (Isn't light always "swift"?) "I swooped" implies some kind of identification with the bird, so maybe "swift" is a reminder of flight. But "leicestershires"? Especially in the plural? Perhaps he was actually in Leicestershire, and the plural is meant to evoke a sense of multiplicity of scenes. If he wasn't physically in Leicester, then "Leicestershire" stands for some kind of ideal British landscape -- a green one, with many small hills and small sheep fields. Britannica says Leicester (or at least its uplands) "forms a deeply rural, scenic area".

It's quite common for smaller birds to chase predators. Some species put a great deal of effort into it, but almost any songbird will harass a hawk, owl, or falcon if it can do so safely (eg, it can remain above the predator). This is adaptive if it encourages the predator to hunt elsewhere, away from the songbird's feeding ground, nest, or roost.

 

[senior]

The grey sea dwindled out, mumbling with a line of foam the far edges of the shining mud beyond the vast moorland of the saltings."

I doubted "mumble" here has its most common meaning (to speak indistinctly) because of how the verb is linked to the noun "edges". Maybe these edges were being chewed by the sea?

Green corn, I imagine it's a field of winter wheat.

But it's corn, not wheat.

And corn is too delicate to be sowed in winter.

Mid - stream is a term used here to indicate the deepest part of a tidal channel, ie a safe place for large ships to be moored without risking grounding when the tide goes out. It's nothing to do with a stream in this case!

It's just that in all such photos from Essex I could find, these bodies of water are way too shallow, especially for a cargo ship.

essex tidal channel at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

Tidal creek - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If he wasn't physically in Leicester, then "Leicestershire" stands for some kind of ideal British landscape

I assume it's probably just that - an idyllic British landscape. He wasn't physically in Leicester. He was riding his bicycle downhill, hence "I swooped".

Many thanks for all the comments!

 

[nartreb]

But it's corn, not wheat.

No, "corn" in British English just means "grain". If no qualifiers or context are given, the grain is usually wheat. Zea mays, what Americans call "corn", was known for a while as "Indian corn", by analogy to more familiar English grains.

 

[nartreb]

It's just that in all such photos from Essex I could find, these bodies of water are way too shallow, especially for a cargo ship.

Estuaries are commonly dredged, for this reason. A narrow channel, marked with buoys, is maintained at considerable effort.
See the red and green marks here: OpenSeaMap - The free nautical chart
See also, purple buoys along the white, deeper channel here:

https://www.mssa.org/images/locations/chart_essex.jpg

The amount of depth needed is not very much, a few meters is sufficient for small ships. Bear in mind that the "cargo ships" Baker was seeing around 1960 in Essex were not necessarily the largest class of cargo ship. Those only visit the largest ports.

 

[senior]

No, "corn" in British English just means "grain".

I had absolutely no idea, didn't even feel like double-checking this.

Thank you for the answer.

 

[PYRTLE]

Estuaries are commonly dredged, for this reason. A narrow channel, marked with buoys, is maintained at considerable effort.

Used to be a continuos operation on the non tidal River Thames when I worked on the navigation section. The aim being to maintain a publicised depth of draught in the centre third of the fairway. However some bright spark, an accountant, decided to cease this operation in the late 90s with the demise of numbers of vessels registered, the fall in commercial journeys and the thought that Old Father Thames was a self dredging river. Only the very essential or emergency dredging now takes place above Teddington Lock.

 

[senior]

"The big eyes protruded slightly from the angle where the vertical moustachial lobes met the dark horizontal eye bars. The bare blue-grey skin surrounding them gleamed white whenever the hawk turned his head."

Do you think the moustachial lobes and horizontal eye bars are the areas I've marked in the photo below (it's clickable)?

It's kind of strange to explain where an eye protrudes, isn't it? If an eye of any animal is round and it protrudes, the part that protrudes is the front surface.

 

[nartreb]

It's kind of strange to describe a falcon's eye as "protruding" at all. They're sheltered beneath a brow ridge, for the same reason that baseball caps have a brim. It's also a bit surprising to talk about "horizonal eye bars" in a peregrine. Many peregines have an overall dark cap or hood, with nothing you could call an "eye bar".

But some have much paler heads: for example:

Here you can see a dark horizontal bar extending behind the eye. If the eye weren't in the way, this eye bar would form a roughly ninety-degree angle with the vertical "mustache" mark that is common in falcons. The eye (and its bluish surround) "protrude" forward of this angle.

 

[senior]

@nartreb It totally makes sense. So -- where the Lemmy Kilmister moustache of this bird intersected with his Zorro mask, was his eye.

Could you please share the code you used to insert an image?

 

[foresttwitcher]

@nartreb It totally makes sense. So -- where the Lemmy Kilmister moustache of this bird intersected with his Zorro mask, was his eye.

Could you please share the code you used to insert an image?

Well done on getting Motorhead & Zoro in the same description.

 

[Patudo]

Baker seemingly differentiates between birds' swooping and stooping. But what's the difference, really? These verbs seem to be synonyms and are used interchangeably by birders, from what I've found on the Internet.

Another flying style that puzzles me is soaring. Is it only about gliding in the air, or gaining height too? E. g.: "Unable to soar because of the gale, he hovered persistently with wonderful power and control."

There is a difference between swooping and stooping. I will try my best to articulate it, although no descriptives can match seeing it in real life. The stoop is when a raptor closes its wings and comes hurtling down, normally at a target (although you will sometimes see peregrines make a spectacular return to their home cliff or building in a similar way). Falcons are not the only raptors with the ability to stoop: accipiters (sparrowhawks and goshawks) and some eagles can, and do. But falcons, especially large falcons, are the supreme exponents of the stoop, with adaptations such as tubercules in their nostrils (clearly seen in the photo in your post #109) that apparently help to break up the air flow entering the bird's lungs, allowing it to breathe more easily while stooping, and quite remarkable aerodynamic factors (see link) that minimize drag. Not all stoops cover a great distance: a peregrine driving away a large gull or buzzard will often make multiple stoops from only 30 to 50 feet above its target. But the big stoops, when a peregrine comes down from 1,000 feet, or sometimes much more, are something else. They seem to be able to go faster than what you would think the pull of gravity should enable them to do. You'll see a peregrine powering across the sky in level flight, closing its wings as it "enters the stoop", coming down at an already impressive speed; and then it does something unnoticeable to your eye, but that lets it streak away, having entered a different realm of speed. It's an incredible sight, and the weight and force that female peregrines, which as you know are larger and heavier than males (tiercels), can bring to bear is truly impressive.

To swoop on the other hand is more general sort of term that describes a swift downward movement ie. a shopper at a Black Friday sale swooped upon an item.

 

[Patudo]

The term soaring I have always associated with rising, particularly on thermals or other upcurrents of rising air. Because these updrafts are often quite localized, a raptor intent on covering ground, as it may need to do to patrol its territory or to search for prey, will need to leave or "come off" the thermal or updraft, losing height as it does, until it finds another updraft and starts rising again. Raptors often manage to do this with hardly a wingbeat, expending very little effort to cover a very large area. This whole pattern of flight may be described as soaring.

You will find, if you watch peregrines enough, that once there is sufficient wind, they don't need thermals or updrafts to "go up" - they can go up simply by making circles into the wind. When there is enough wind, and a peregrine is intent on gaining height, it can rise by as much as 100 feet or so with each circle. This, too, I suppose I would class as "soaring". This must be how the expression "sailing" (referred to by nartreb in post #90) came about, because it's somewhat similar to how a sailboat goes upwind by tacking into the wind. A peregrine will adjust or "trim" its wings and tail to suit the conditions that particular day in a way that reminds one of a sailboat being trimmed to sail quickly and smoothly; it's not a total surprise that the (very old) falconer's term for a hawk's wings was her "sails". The manner in which peregrines skilfully use wind and rising air to take them where they wish to go with the minimum of effort is really quite wonderful, and one of the joys of watching them.

Incidentally, the references in Baker to peregrines hovering have made quite a few readers suspect that he mis-identified peregrines as kestrels, which regularly hover in the classic sense (hanging stationary in the air with beating wings). I can only think that his use of the term hovering was one of these odd individual expressions he uses (like "leicestershires"), as peregrines very, very seldom - if ever - do this. Maybe a very callow juvenile in its first week of flight, looking askance at a landing point in the way a learner driver approaches a parking spot - but the adult birds have such mastery of flight that they simply do not need to hang in the air, even though they probably can if they wish to.

 

[senior]

@Patudo Thanks for the comments!

The foreword to the book mentions how a Scandinavian translator of the book, who was a birder too, was puzzled by Baker's peregrines hovering. But apparently Baker himself insisted that this verb is translated as it is and no euphemism is used.

Right now, I can only add to this that there are some videos with hovering peregrines available on Youtube. Although they are much more rare than hoverings of other falcons.

(Although as a non-professional I cannot even confirm the birds in the videos are indeed peregrines and not other species.)

I have this other question about flight patterns.

"He rises from the orchard, and together they float slowly overhead, drifting, drifting and calling."

Would you say that floating and drifting are more or less the same styles of flying?

 

[Patudo]

@senior - that bird in the video you linked, is a kestrel...

Would you say that floating and drifting are more or less the same styles of flying?

They're similar but not quite the same. Floating, in the sense of a bird in flight, would suggest that the bird's flight seemed buoyant. Black-headed gulls have this quality, sometimes described as appearing "light on the wing".

To drift would mean to be carried by the wind (or if you were at sea, by the tide or current).

 

[senior]

(March 21st) "A tawny owl, long dead, lay at the edge of South Wood. I lifted its broad wings, and powder down puffed out of them like dust. When I threw the light dry carcass aside, the long talons caught uncannily in my gloves, as though they still had life."
If not snow powder, what could the word in bold mean? Just dust?

"I ran after him. He dropped the partridge, but went back for it immediately. His recovery of the prey was amazingly fast. He flicked down and up again like an eye blinking. Then he went out of the orchard and across the brook, flying with quick deep wing-beats, sinking nearly to the ground, rising again, sagging and rebounding like a woodpecker. A red-legged partridge weighs a pound to a pound and a half."
"sagging and rebounding" - what kind of motion exactly could it be?

"He looked intently at the grass near my feet, seeing or hearing some movement of which I was quite unaware, although I was only two yards from it and the hawk was thirty. His eyes followed this movement. Suddenly his head jerked up and he flew quickly across to hover above the grass ten years away. He turned on his side, closed his wings, and stooped. It was a fall of six feet only, but the technique of the stoop is the same for six feet as for six hundred. He hit the grass hard, but without impact, soft and silent as an owl. He rose from it lightly, carrying a large dead mouse, which he took to an apple tree and swallowed in two bites, first the head, then the rest. All this was done within twenty yards of me and I did not even have to keep still."
This piece of text is confusin. Could "above the grass ten years away" be in fact "ten yards"? On the other hand, at the ending of the paragraph Baker writes that the bird was only "twenty yards" away.

"He faced the sun, and soon became drowsy and slack on his feet. He drew one leg up into his feathers, and slept, waking frequently to preen and look around. Hawks sleep lightly."
Does this mean he lifted one leg and sticked it under his wing?

"The kestrels flew to the dead elm, tremulously calling. In the nettles at the foot of the tree I found pellets dropped there by both kestrel and peregrine. The peregrine’s contained many woodpigeon feathers, and several large gritty stones an eighth of an inch across, with sharp points and edges. It picks them up, as an aid to digestion, when it bathes in the brook."
Do you think the pellets were poop or what the birds had coughed out?

(About little owls.) "At dusk, before hunting begins, they are different again. Their spring song is a single woodwind note, rising, hollow, full of sweet pathos. It sounds like a distant curlew calling in a dream."
If a melody is a rising one, how can it only have one note?

(About a stout.) "It crouched, ran, sprang, and crept, quivering with excitement, seeing the vivid colour of a smell. It was like a man trying to escape from a maze. It leapt on to the marsh, and I saw its red-brown back undulating away towards a grazing rabbit that was big with disease and helpless as a bogged cow. But the stoat did not kill it. It survives, protected by the horror of its own private death."
The rabbit swelled because of myxomatosis, which is why the stoat didn't kill it, is it what Baker likely meant?

"Two hundred golden plover fed in growing corn, listening and stabbing forward and down, like big thrushes. Many were already in summer plumage. Their back chests shone in the sun below the mustard yellow of their blacks, like black shoes half covered with buttercup dust. "
"Back chests" likely means, simply, backs, the upper section of backs.
The word "blacks" here likely means black garments?
But I don't understand the metaphor in full, and what body part the "blacks" refer to.
"Their back chests shone in the sun below the mustard yellow of their blacks..."

 

[nartreb]

(March 21st) "A tawny owl, long dead, lay at the edge of South Wood. I lifted its broad wings, and powder down puffed out of them like dust. When I threw the light dry carcass aside, the long talons caught uncannily in my gloves, as though they still had life."
If not snow powder, what could the word in bold mean? Just dust?

He's saying the powder is bits of down - the small, fluffy feathers closest to the skin. They're not as robust as the flight feathers, and they're not as firmly attached to the skin. If a bird has been dead for a while, it makes sense that bits of down will fall off if you shake the carcasss. Shaking a dead owl is not something I have any experience with. I have seen powdery bits of something stuck to a window after a bird strike, which may have been down or something else.

"I ran after him. He dropped the partridge, but went back for it immediately. His recovery of the prey was amazingly fast. He flicked down and up again like an eye blinking. Then he went out of the orchard and across the brook, flying with quick deep wing-beats, sinking nearly to the ground, rising again, sagging and rebounding like a woodpecker. A red-legged partridge weighs a pound to a pound and a half."
"sagging and rebounding" - what kind of motion exactly could it be?

We talked about "swooping" previously in this thread - this is a similar idea. Peregrines usually fly fast and level, but this one was letting itself drop a bit off its intended line and then recovering - a style of flight common in some birds. I guess the weight of the prey would explain the more awkward flight path.

"He looked intently at the grass near my feet, seeing or hearing some movement of which I was quite unaware, although I was only two yards from it and the hawk was thirty. His eyes followed this movement. Suddenly his head jerked up and he flew quickly across to hover above the grass ten years away. He turned on his side, closed his wings, and stooped. It was a fall of six feet only, but the technique of the stoop is the same for six feet as for six hundred. He hit the grass hard, but without impact, soft and silent as an owl. He rose from it lightly, carrying a large dead mouse, which he took to an apple tree and swallowed in two bites, first the head, then the rest. All this was done within twenty yards of me and I did not even have to keep still."
This piece of text is confusin. Could "above the grass ten years away" be in fact "ten yards"? On the other hand, at the ending of the paragraph Baker writes that the bird was only "twenty yards" away.

"ten years" is an error, he clearly meant "ten yards". You're right that the geometry is confusing - the bird was thirty yards from the mouse at the start of the paragraph (while Baker was two yards from the mouse), then hovers ten yards away [from Baker?], then stoops, dropping six feet (two yards) of height. It is unlikely the stoop was perfectly vertical, so it's all self-consistent so far even if he ends up two yard from Baker, but why Baker says it "all" happens within twenty yards is unclear. Either "all" starts from the hover, in which case it all happened within ten (or twelve) yards, or else it "all" happened starting from thirty yards. Why Baker wrote "within twenty yards" I do not know; he seems like a good poet but a poor reporter. Edit; I suspect his tale changed in the telling (or editing), he changed "thirty" to "twenty" for drama or vice versa for believability but overlooked one of the two spots he needed to change.

"He faced the sun, and soon became drowsy and slack on his feet. He drew one leg up into his feathers, and slept, waking frequently to preen and look around. Hawks sleep lightly."
Does this mean he lifted one leg and sticked it under his wing?

Unlikely; lots of birds sleep on one leg and none of them do that. There is plenty of room in the belly feathers.

"The kestrels flew to the dead elm, tremulously calling. In the nettles at the foot of the tree I found pellets dropped there by both kestrel and peregrine. The peregrine’s contained many woodpigeon feathers, and several large gritty stones an eighth of an inch across, with sharp points and edges. It picks them up, as an aid to digestion, when it bathes in the brook."
Do you think the pellets were poop or what the birds had coughed out?

The latter. Coughing up "pellets" is normal for many predatory birds including falcons.

(About little owls.) "At dusk, before hunting begins, they are different again. Their spring song is a single woodwind note, rising, hollow, full of sweet pathos. It sounds like a distant curlew calling in a dream."
If a melody is a rising one, how can it only have one note?

Perhaps he meant it was a "sliding note" or melisma. That could be called "one note" in the sense that the sound is never interrupted.

(About a stout.) "It crouched, ran, sprang, and crept, quivering with excitement, seeing the vivid colour of a smell. It was like a man trying to escape from a maze. It leapt on to the marsh, and I saw its red-brown back undulating away towards a grazing rabbit that was big with disease and helpless as a bogged cow. But the stoat did not kill it. It survives, protected by the horror of its own private death."
The rabbit swelled because of myxomatosis, which is why the stoat didn't kill it, is it what Baker likely meant?

Sounds good to me. Myxomatosis can cause abdominal swelling. Perhaps some other disease does too.

"Two hundred golden plover fed in growing corn, listening and stabbing forward and down, like big thrushes. Many were already in summer plumage. Their back chests shone in the sun below the mustard yellow of their blacks, like black shoes half covered with buttercup dust. "
"Back chests" likely means, simply, backs, the upper section of backs.
The word "blacks" here likely means black garments?
But I don't understand the metaphor in full, and what body part the "blacks" refer to.
"Their back chests shone in the sun below the mustard yellow of their blacks..."

Another piece of bad editing here. "Back" and "Black" have been switched around.
This is a golden plover: https://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/birdfacts/00167_Golden Plover_Edmund Fellowes.jpg
They have black chests and spots of mustard yellow on their backs.

 

[senior]

@nartreb Many thanks for the comments, I think it is all clear now!

@Patudo Regarding drifting and floating - I understood, thanks for the explanation!

 

[dantheman]

The ridge above the eye is commonly called the 'eyebrow'

Powder down is an actual feature on birds (google 'powder down' or 'powder in birds wings') for waterproofing etc

or see below for a nice visual ;-)

bird impression on windows - Google Search