I was delivering some books to a customer in Ramsey and I saw a peregrine falcon.

Not overly surprising you might think, but this one was eating a pigeon on a small patch of grass right in the middle of the town.  Ramsey is the second largest town on the Isle of Man and, while not huge, still has its share of main roads and bustling shops.

I’d never seen a peregrine falcon on the ground before so I hung back to watch.  Not so other passersby.  Pretty soon a small crowd, all waving phones around taking photographs and selfies, was… well… crowding.  Not surprisingly the bird didn’t like it.  She backed off,  fluttered to perch on a nearby bench and eventually gave up and flew away.  Cheated of her lunch the falcon had to hunt again.  Less shy, crows and seagulls finished off her pigeon.

It struck me that this was like a microcosm of what’s happening in the world.  Our wants take precedence over the needs of everything we share the planet with.  We seem incapable of standing back.

Birds of prey do well on the Isle of Man.  We have no foxes so the gap in the food chain is wider for them.  In Manx the peregrine falcon is shirragh y ree, which means ‘sharp hook of the king’. 

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