Wildlife at Westhill - All Creatures Great and Small.

As an interval during George Herbert week here are a couple of photos taken at opportune moments. The first is of a young Sparrow Hawk which collided at speed with our glass patio doors.

It came round from unconsciousness, got to its feet, swayed drunkenly for a minute, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Where the H*** did that come from?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And after this stunned adolescent learner flier recovered, and tidied up its language, it had a look at itself in the glass and thought, " Lookin' good - but won't do that again!"

Then early this morning I looked out the same patio windows and saw the biggest crane fly in the world flying over our house. (better known as daddy long legs)

 

Daddy Longlegs

By Ted Kooser from Flying at Night Poems, 1965-85, Pittsburgh Press.  

Here, on fine long legs springy as steel,

a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill

that skims along over the basement floor

wrapped up in a simple obsession.

Eight legs reach out like the master ribs

of a web in which some thought is caught

dead center in its own small world,

a thought so far from the touch of things

that we can only guess at it. If mine,

it would be the secret dream

of walking alone across the floor of my life

with an easy grace, and with love enough

to live on at the center of myself.

This daddy long legs wasn't walking on a basement floor - it was attached to the patio doors spreadeagled as if pinned by an entomologist. Such fragile transience.