Your browser version is outdated. We recommend that you update your browser to the latest version.

Only a bird.  

 

 

The black cloud is darker today.

It’s August and the sun is shining but I can feel the weight of a cloud hanging over me as I take her up in my hands. I know she is gone as I hold her weakened body, her feathers perfect and her eyes once so bright and menacing are fading fast as she looks at me.

 I have kept birds all my life, birds of all kinds, from Appenzellars to Zebra finches, but exactly ten years and ten weeks ago I climbed a spruce tree to select a young Sparrowhawk, a couple of ounces of fluff and talons that was to give me more pleasure, pain, fun and adventure than all the other birds put together, and here she was dying in my hands.......

 

Please follow this link to our new website to read this article; 

http://www.nationalbirdofpreycentre.ie/only-a-bird.html