I believe you have to laugh in life and most importantly be able to laugh at yourself! Well I had to laugh at myself the other day!
I love my running and I'm really fortunate to have some nice hill's with amazing scenery to run around. Not only is it good for health (apparently) I normally get some cracking views of wildlife especially birds of prey.
Sunday morning I decided to go for a run around and over my favourite hill, it was a lovely morning with blue skies and sunshine the sightings of buzzard and kestrel as I got to the hill. I decided to run round the bottom of the hill alongside some farm land before going up and over back to my car.
Now I'd like to say I'm good at identifying native birds of prey by sight and sound as I spend plenty of time in the field watching them but sometimes you get it wrong, or in this case embarrasingly wrong. As I ran round the path next to the fields I heard an alarm call from a bird of prey and my ears pricked up straight away.
I slowed down to a jog and looked over in what I thought was the direction of the noise and noticed a gnarly bare Oak tree then I heard the noise again. At first I thought Kestrel and scanned the tree for a visual, then the noise again but it was actually more hawk like. I had stopped running at this point and heard the alarm call of another bird straight after the hawks alarm call but still no visual.
The noise started again and I checked the fields but with no binoculars it would have been impossible to see a Sparrowhawk in the grass. What was also odd was a couple of crows were wandering about in the grass not paying the blindest notice to what sounded like a fight near them. Then the noise again exactly the same as the other few times and the penny dropped.
The noise was coming from the farm behind the Oak tree, and then it started again right on cue. It was a hawk and its prey but a recorded one on replay designed to keep birds off the livestock feed on the farm. How stupid did I feel, and not only that I was freezing cold stood their like a right plonker looking for a bird that was in fact a plastic box in a cow shed. Lesson learned!
I bet the crows had a laugh about it!
I love my running and I'm really fortunate to have some nice hill's with amazing scenery to run around. Not only is it good for health (apparently) I normally get some cracking views of wildlife especially birds of prey.
Sunday morning I decided to go for a run around and over my favourite hill, it was a lovely morning with blue skies and sunshine the sightings of buzzard and kestrel as I got to the hill. I decided to run round the bottom of the hill alongside some farm land before going up and over back to my car.
Now I'd like to say I'm good at identifying native birds of prey by sight and sound as I spend plenty of time in the field watching them but sometimes you get it wrong, or in this case embarrasingly wrong. As I ran round the path next to the fields I heard an alarm call from a bird of prey and my ears pricked up straight away.
I slowed down to a jog and looked over in what I thought was the direction of the noise and noticed a gnarly bare Oak tree then I heard the noise again. At first I thought Kestrel and scanned the tree for a visual, then the noise again but it was actually more hawk like. I had stopped running at this point and heard the alarm call of another bird straight after the hawks alarm call but still no visual.
The noise started again and I checked the fields but with no binoculars it would have been impossible to see a Sparrowhawk in the grass. What was also odd was a couple of crows were wandering about in the grass not paying the blindest notice to what sounded like a fight near them. Then the noise again exactly the same as the other few times and the penny dropped.
The noise was coming from the farm behind the Oak tree, and then it started again right on cue. It was a hawk and its prey but a recorded one on replay designed to keep birds off the livestock feed on the farm. How stupid did I feel, and not only that I was freezing cold stood their like a right plonker looking for a bird that was in fact a plastic box in a cow shed. Lesson learned!
I bet the crows had a laugh about it!
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