the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

Stopping off at the supermarket this morning, I got to see one of those little vignettes that make being alive special. It also was another proof in my theory that looking up often pays off in terms of what you can see.

Today it was the sight of a red kite circling low over the car park. I often see them when out driving, but there there is the priority of looking where I am going rather than bird spotting, and so it was a joy to watch this kite as it moved across to the industrial sites across the road.

It flew a few lazy figure of eight patterns and then, gaining some height, peeled off into an almost vertical dive. I assumed that, perhaps, it had spotted a rat or some sort of similar morsel, but, just before it disappeared behind the building, it aborted its dive and began to flap vigorously upwards.

The reason for this change of plan became apparent when two other avian shapes flew up after it. As the trio came back towards me the other pair were a gull, of some variety, and a crow. This pair pursued the kite away, the crow giving up after a couple of hundred metres, but the gull not only maintained the chase, but carried out a series of attacks. The kite always twisted away from these thrusts and, in the end, the gull came back.

I’m not sure what the kite had spotted, but it was going to have to ,look elsewhere for breakfast. Such is life in the urban jungle.