THE ODD TRIO
Who practices hospitality entertains God - Ancient Proverb
The Secretary bird sat disconsolately in the empty saucer-like nest she had made high in a massive old oak tree. She thought about her chick seized by a marauding eagle and her mate who with clipped wings had struggled into the air, lost the thermal on which he was riding and crashed to a cruel death on the razor wire which topped the fence of the dreadful menagerie in which they had been trapped for the past five years. She flew upwards and then laboriously crossed the boundary fence to an uncertain freedom. She walked across the Norfolk Brecklands, fifteen miles a day until she found, near South Dereham, “The British Raptor Sanctuary” where the Man welcomed her, gave her fresh food and some little hope for her future.
A Posse of British Raptors - a broken winged Barn Owl, two tailless Sparrowhawks, a club-clawed Goshawk and a rather less than enthusiastic purblind Kestrel - listened to her soft mewing cry. She was a conspicuous bird, almost four feet high, elegant in her grey and white and black plumage with long black knee britches, quilled headress and orange eye patched face. They envied her her exotic beauty; they feared she had more than her fair share of fresh food brought to her by the Man; they mocked her African song; they despised her hunting technique - although she had wings and a beak she ran after her prey, for Horus’ sake, and stamped it to death!
Sitting quietly in an adjacent tree, another immigrant outcast watched and mused. He was a young undersized Spanish Griffon Vulture brought to the Sanctuary from Belgium where, searching for food many hundreds of miles from his home in the Pyrenees, he became separated from the rest of his flock and was found distressed and exhausted wandering in a park near Ghent. An exceedingly nervous bird, constantly terrified of an imagined attack from his own shadow, he nowadays rarely finished his dive from his nest to the raw meat put out for him, but soared back empty-beaked and hungry to the safety of the tree-top. He had to be hand fed and so had become the butt of the Posse’s cruel jokes.
A few days later he flew low above the ground close to the running Secretary Bird. She did not turn him away, but left for him a dead mouse and a grass snake, and there was no swooping shadow to terrify him. Guided by the sound of her running feet the Kestrel joined the strange pair and found a short tailed vole which the Secretary had stunned and kicked in his direction. As they made their daily sorties like some dignified avian Battle of Britain Flight emerging modestly out of a misty morning, the Posse shrugged its collective wings, turned its collective ire upon a flight of young marauding buzzards who were creating havoc amongst the older raptor residents, and finally left the Odd Trio to work out their lives together in peace.
Naomi
A Posse of British Raptors - a broken winged Barn Owl, two tailless Sparrowhawks, a club-clawed Goshawk and a rather less than enthusiastic purblind Kestrel - listened to her soft mewing cry. She was a conspicuous bird, almost four feet high, elegant in her grey and white and black plumage with long black knee britches, quilled headress and orange eye patched face. They envied her her exotic beauty; they feared she had more than her fair share of fresh food brought to her by the Man; they mocked her African song; they despised her hunting technique - although she had wings and a beak she ran after her prey, for Horus’ sake, and stamped it to death!
Sitting quietly in an adjacent tree, another immigrant outcast watched and mused. He was a young undersized Spanish Griffon Vulture brought to the Sanctuary from Belgium where, searching for food many hundreds of miles from his home in the Pyrenees, he became separated from the rest of his flock and was found distressed and exhausted wandering in a park near Ghent. An exceedingly nervous bird, constantly terrified of an imagined attack from his own shadow, he nowadays rarely finished his dive from his nest to the raw meat put out for him, but soared back empty-beaked and hungry to the safety of the tree-top. He had to be hand fed and so had become the butt of the Posse’s cruel jokes.
A few days later he flew low above the ground close to the running Secretary Bird. She did not turn him away, but left for him a dead mouse and a grass snake, and there was no swooping shadow to terrify him. Guided by the sound of her running feet the Kestrel joined the strange pair and found a short tailed vole which the Secretary had stunned and kicked in his direction. As they made their daily sorties like some dignified avian Battle of Britain Flight emerging modestly out of a misty morning, the Posse shrugged its collective wings, turned its collective ire upon a flight of young marauding buzzards who were creating havoc amongst the older raptor residents, and finally left the Odd Trio to work out their lives together in peace.
Naomi
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