I was entertaining a few friends last weekend and we had just finished the salmon when the row broke out. All had gone well until then. Bordeaux wine. Salad from the garden. The usual chatter about work and books and children. We were munching through the apple crumble and decided to open one more bottle when the discussion turned to politics.
I dare not even mention the precise subject on which one guest rested his loyalty and which caused me to disagree with him furiously, but suffice it to say that we were both diametrically opposed to each other’s point of view.
And that was the problem. It’s not that we were taking different sides in an argument. We had become the argument. He embodied his position, and I mine. So we snorted across the table at each other like two bulls; eyes bulging and voices raised. We tried to wound each other with facts and statistics until other guests intervened and cajoled us into a state of wounded silence. And then we changed the subject.
I was so shocked the following morning that I went for a walk alone in the hills, with headphones on my ears to keep up with the news. And I walked as if disembodied from the bogland and mountain streams around me.
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I used to walk the hills paying attention to songbirds and looking out for hen harriers who were wont to glide above me in the grey Roscommon sky. But not anymore. The windmills whoosh around with a deadening rhythm and the hen harriers have moved camp, leaving me to cloister myself with headphones.
Before my guests left I apologised for being rude and over-emotional in the argument, and my friend did likewise.
It had been a bruising night, although not quite as bad as what happened the following day when I witnessed a tiny bird being slaughtered. I think it was a pipit.
The little brown creature was singing its head off, probably warning its mates that there was danger in the vicinity. I was standing at the door of my studio and noticed something fluttering in the gorse, like a bird caught in a branch. Then he popped out into the open and the hen harrier swooped from nowhere.
It was more like a dart than a swoop. Swooping is what swallows do when feeding on insects in the air but this was a dive, like a jet fighter; and the harrier grabbed the pipit by the wings and flew over the bushes towards the lawn where she landed and neutralised the little creature and then took off again, this time with the pipit slumped between her hanging claws.
It was a ferocious event to witness. And it happened so close to where I stood that the harrier appeared huge and elegant, and from the striped brown tail fanned out behind, I guessed it was a female. I had seen a similar bird glide above the lake in previous days, cawing as it flew back and forth and I guessed it was a mother trying to encourage chicks to do what they do best; fly. Now here she was again hunting for the dinner.
If there had been a pheasant available the harrier might have taken it, because pheasants are slow and awkward and easy to catch, if you happen to be a hawk. Whereas pipits are nifty little creatures. But I suppose the harrier was hungry.
And I was morally confused because I ought to have been outraged by the killing. I ought to have chased the big bad hawk away with a broom handle and forced it to let the little fellow go. If the cat had done the deed I would have been disgusted. And yet all I did was stand in awe with a kind of exhilaration, because the hen harrier was so beautiful with her striped tail trembling, as her claws ended the pipit’s life.
I accept that such a confession may disturb the sensibilities of the most squeamish Irish Times readers, but if you consider how rare the hen harriers are, how they were reputedly driven away from the wind farms over the years and how there is at least one pair nesting on the ground at the edge of a quarry near us, you might take delight in the fact that the lady harrier found herself a good dinner. And there’s no shortage of pipets in Roscommon. And life can’t always be as peaceful as my dinner parties.