wild life (6)

"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and

gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding


Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing. 

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion


Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! 

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion


Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion."

The Windhover (To Christ Our Lord), Gerard Manley Hopkins

My kestrel.

I only ever see the one, though there must be at least a pair nesting nearby – I once saw it repeatedly dive-bombing a couple of the buzzards, which suggests the existence of a nest in the vicinity that it was trying to protect. And succeeding, too, for the buzzards, much larger birds though they are, eventually flew away. “Brute beauty and valour” indeed.

Peneireiro, we call it in this country, a reference to the flap-flap-flapping of its wingtips while hovering, as if panning the air through a sieve – pretty similar to the English vernacular, windhover, one could say. For another version, alas, we have no equivalent – the earthy, robust and oh-so-descriptive windfucker. Poetry.