A Day of Birds

Some days we see more than others.  Yesterday I was in the garden looking at the view and a sparrowhawk flew through the garden and landed in the ash tree about fifteen feet above my head.  I think it was a juvenile as it seemed a little unsure of itself.  A beautiful pale silver colour, banded with darker stripes, with a darker head.  The bird was hidden in the tree but there was an anxious mob of swallows and house martins high above the ash, a swirling mass of birds calling and shrieking at the sparrowhawk.  After about five minutes - five minutes - it flew back the way it came, over the garden and out towards the valley, with a halo of mobbing birds above it.  I hate saying 'it' but I don't know if it was a male or a female.  

Then sitting in the living room in the late afternoon I glanced up to see a red kite swing out of the woods and down the hillside towards the valley side.  

And in the early evening two buzzards were mewing at each other - in play or courtship or war I do not know - in and out of the trees above the house, tumbling over each other in the air, through the trees then out and back again, until they disappeared over towards the quarry.