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Showing posts from September, 2017

Stand-by

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Booted Eagle in September (John Hawkins) Summer clings on, despite the delicious freshness at dawn. The countryside is poised on stand-by until the first rains of autumn. The sound of August's piping Bee-eaters have long gone and replaced by the incongruous cheeping of Booted Eagles. Slowly circling against the porcelain sky, this aggressive small eagle utters a premigratory chitting call, recalling a slowed-down version of the cheeps of a day-old poultry chick. I hear this call in the spring as well, as pairs dance over newly established territories. Now it seems like a lament, to the vestige of their sojourn here in Extremadura. There is barely no other movement. Clusters of House Martins on the wires disperse into a void during the day, and Red-rumped Swallows, now in family groups, descend in wide glides to nest sites to roost at dusk. But during the day, a heavy emptiness hangs over the olive groves and fields. Only the indefatigable Heliotrope is in flower, somehow find