I don’t usually take binoculars on my early-morning bike ride; if I did, I would stop too often to get any benefit. But after a swift circuit around the levels, I picked them up and headed down the lane behind my home to look for a stonechat I’d seen the day before.
The stonechat had moved on; possibly because of the presence of a male merlin – the first I’d seen here in Somerset for a decade. I first noticed the bird as he flew away from me, and resigned myself to the usual brief views. But moments later, he landed on top of a tall hedgerow.
As I freewheeled slowly closer, I feared my luminous yellow cycling top would spook him. Yet to my delight, he stayed put, giving me my best ever view of this, our smallest falcon.
Gunmetal grey-blue above, his streaked breast tinged with orange, he first turned to look at me, then away, showing off the false “eyes” on the back of his head. These are supposed to deter larger predators; but they may actually be to goad smaller birds, such as skylarks and meadow pipits, into mobbing him.
Then he dropped off the perch and flew away, direct and low, off to ambush those same pipits and skylarks, somewhere across the moor.
The Swallow: A Biography, by Stephen Moss, is published by Square Peg (£12.99). It is available through the Guardian Bookshop for £11.30.
