A bird is watching

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/26/country-diary-bird-watching

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The woods ring with the sounds of birds feeding on insects and berries. A blackcap sings briefly, and the harsh, croaking call of an unseen raven echoes above the canopy overhead.

I walk to the edge of the woods and look out across the fields and valley. The sky is brightening, but the morning mist still hangs in the air, obscuring the detail of the trees in the distance, their dark forms stirring in a grey veil of damp.

A jay wafts over the fields, flapping its broad wings, and lands on the grass. It carries a large acorn in its beak, which it hammers into the ground to store, before taking off, chattering loudly.

I continue along the footpath as the sun begins to burn through. The leaves of the oaks are changing to brown.

The shortening days and cooler mornings are triggering the release of abscisic acid, hardening the leaf stems and shutting down their cholorophyll-generating machines. The trees are beginning to conserve energy and nutrients for the months ahead.

A small, pale bird flutters out from the top of a bramble hedge, it hovers and then returns to its perch. The spotted flycatcher sees me and darts out over the field, but it turns back and lands in the trees along the edge of the woods near me.

I stand still and wait. Soft grey-brown, with dark back and wings, lightly speckled breast and small, pointed bill, the flycatcher may be less showy than its pied or red-breasted cousins, but its soft beauty suits this hazy morning.

It continues its insect-catching sorties, snapping at the flies buzzing by the trees. The blurring bird, its flight a whirr of wings, hangs in the air, hovering like a hummingbird for what must be only fractions of a second, but it seems to defy the normal laws of time and gravity.

Again, the bird flickers out from its branch in a blur, snatches at a fly and returns to its perch. It wipes its bill on a twig and preens in the strengthening sun. The flycatcher will soon head south.