gwythaints in the garden

It is COLD here.  There was a dusting of snow on the cars yesterday a.m., like icing sugar, and real snow on the mountains (which you can see from our house).  I wasted a LONG TIME (about 2 hours) watching a "buzzard" kill and devour a pigeon in a tree two doors down.  In the U.S, we would call it a hawk--it is not what you think of as a turkey buzzard! The bird you're most likely to confuse it with, believe it or not, is a golden eagle.  I swear this one had a four foot wingspan--it was amazing.  About two dozen carrion crows and two magpies, which I've never seen in our garden in the seven years we've been here (Perthshire being one of the few places in the UK where they're not commonplace), were mobbing it for half an hour before they went away. I didn't realize, at first, that it was hiding from them in the redwood opposite not because it was hurt, but because it was clutching its breakfast. It reminded me of nothing so much as "Lyra and the Birds" and I wanted to go outside and scare the crows away.
 

I got a ringside seat to the whole show and took probably too many pictures. But they are on my film camera, with the telephoto lens, so you won't see them for a while. (and they may be rubbish.)

I was a little worried at first that the hawk might have caught THE CAT, but then I saw the feathers flying!

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mhari, who as you may know was inspired by simien_mtn_fox   to create a set of Aksumite Sims, has further enabled my madness by sending me PEACOCKS. Not available in the UK and they won't ship toys from the US; nor are they available at the Playmobil website, so we did not have any in our collection. You people.  I am so looking forward to Chapter 8.