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Wild birds on Shetland


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Most folk miss them as the commonest place to see them is hovering at a fair height, watching for mice or whatever to dive on and catch. Its higher than what is normally within anyone's field of vision, so unless you're looking skyward for some other reason, or are significantly uphill from them doing it you're oblivious.

 

Not overly keen on those things though, one attacked me when I was a toddler. :?

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^ Seriously? Were you wearing a mouse costume?

 

Yup, I'm serious. No mouse costume though, but I was wearing something that had an amount of bright scarlet colour on it. It was speculated at the time that the bird may have thought the red was a fresh and bloody rabbit etc crang.

 

My grandmidder witnessed it, in fact I knew nothing about it until she came charging up to me and started waving her arms in the air above my head. She'd only been standing a few yards away, and caught sight of him diving towards the spot I was playing at, out of the corner of her eye. By the time she got there, and he realised it all wasn't such a good idea after all, she claimed he actually hit one of hers arms with a flap of of one of his wings as he tried to pull away, he was that close.

 

In the melee she made no attempt to identify the species, all she could tell of it was that it was a "medium" sized bird, and it dived like a stone dropping. Hence it was supposed it had been a hawk of some sort or similar.

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  • 4 weeks later...
^ Seriously? Were you wearing a mouse costume?

 

Yup, I'm serious. No mouse costume though, but I was wearing something that had an amount of bright scarlet colour on it. It was speculated at the time that the bird may have thought the red was a fresh and bloody rabbit etc crang.

 

My grandmidder witnessed it, in fact I knew nothing about it until she came charging up to me and started waving her arms in the air above my head. She'd only been standing a few yards away, and caught sight of him diving towards the spot I was playing at, out of the corner of her eye. By the time she got there, and he realised it all wasn't such a good idea after all, she claimed he actually hit one of hers arms with a flap of of one of his wings as he tried to pull away, he was that close.

 

In the melee she made no attempt to identify the species, all she could tell of it was that it was a "medium" sized bird, and it dived like a stone dropping. Hence it was supposed it had been a hawk of some sort or similar.

 

Bonxie?

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