For a long time we’ve had big problems with crows around here. We solved ours at the house by putting a fake owl on the porch, but where the others like going for a walk there was not so much a murder of crows as a whole genocide. At least, there was. The crows seem to have disappeared. Our Mistress only really thought about it today when she watched the most beautiful buzzard for the third day running, sitting on top of a post surveying the field. Shortly afterwards she saw a couple of members of another bird of prey family which she was not absolutely sure what they were, possible kestrels but she thought they looked a bit redder than that. She has also noticed the barn owl flying between the trees along the side of the same field in the late afternoon. She can only assume that the crows have at last met their match and have moved on to annoy someone else. Whilst she doesn’t want to think for too long on the impact on other wildlife of having bigger birds of prey around, she has thoroughly enjoyed watching them and is quite pleased to see the back of the crows. Aristotle just stands and watches them with her. Shadow has the good sense to see when a bird is too big to be worth chasing, or more to the point too fast! Wilma on the other paw is still intent on giving chase and wonders why our Mistress has told her it’s not such a good idea! If she remembers our Mistress has said she will take her camera when she goes out with Ari to see if they can get some decent pictures. There’s one point on the walk where they have managed to get quite close to the buzzard and it doesn’t seem at all concerned to see them. It gave me happy memories of when we used to live in Belgium and would see the buzzard almost every day on our walk. He became one of the characters in my book Alfie’s Woods. Happy memories.
You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com
Alfie’s Diary – the Book as well as our other books are available HERE