Life and death at the margins

On the way up to Dublin, a fortnight ago, on a newly constructed part of the N6 dual-carriageway, I saw a kestrel swoop and catch a mouse, before alighting on a post to finish off its prey. The verge of a motorway is a good spot for hawks – plenty of prey. There is one drawback – the constant stream of cars whizzing by at high speed. Which, in turn, produces a constant supply of roadkill, which is a lot easier to catch.

I was driving through the midlands on a very frosty morning a vouple of days later, when I spotted a cow (pictured above) in some distress in a field by the road. She had calved a while earlier, but the effort had downed her. It looked like the calf was dead – it was still, and one of it’s legs was twisted badly and still linked to the cow. The cow looked lively enough but couldn’t get up. There wasn’t much I could do – a bull stood nearby – but I went to a nearby farm and let them know what was happening.

And just down the road, a hen pheasant had learned the hard way that a defence mechanism of waiting until the last minute before fleeing, which had kept the species alive for eons, is no match for a speeding car.