Tales from Iceni Territory

4 January, Little Abington

It’s cold. Normal service for January has resumed. Puddles iced over, sun shining. I’m thinking about nothing other than why the morning traffic is backed-up along the A1307. When straight ahead, 200 yards away across the main road, I see 14 roe deer grazing quietly in a tight herd.
It’s enough to stop me in my tracks. I can’t remember seeing so many, so close to the village. Although not far from the busy road, they are well placed with miles of sparsely populated rolling South Cambridgeshire countryside to the north and east with just enough in the way of woodland to provide cover.

We, Boom and I, move on, the drivers in their cars with nothing better to do than watch us while they wait. One hundred yards along the road, out of nowhere, a red kite flies over. I double take, because this is normally buzzard territory. Also, in my newly started count, I’ve not yet clocked a thrush, a sparrow or a dunnock, but two kites have now sailed right past me in four days.

If that wasn’t enough, our new friend the kestrel is ‘waiting’ on the telegraph wires as we find our way from the main road round to the quieter west of the village. He, or she, lets us get to within 100 yards before deciding that’s enough and performs a low glide along Bourn Bridge Road to another sunny perch just the field side of the hedge, doubtless cursing that bloody man and his dog who keep appearing on its radar.

From there, the hawk is sufficiently comfortable to let a car pass within ten yards. I reflect that it’s a miracle I ever get close enough to see anything appended to 15 kilos of excitable hound.