The Sweet Chestnut Collector

Deep in the heart of ancient English woodland was where you could find us last weekend – where you might have also spotted this sweet chestnut collector of mine, gathering a mighty haul in his “bastik”.

As my child, he is of course stubborn as heck.  He refused any and all offers of help to carry said basket for him – even when it probably weighed more than he did.  With yells of “I do it myself” and “not your bastik” punctuating the peaceful woodland environment, many aspects of sweetness – apart from the nuts themselves of course, went out of the proverbial window.

So intent was he on collecting each and every single nut from the forest floor, he didn’t notice he was leaving quite a trail behind him as his “bastik” hit yet another bump, rock or trunk, and I wasn’t about to point that out to him.  This walk had dragged on much longer than it could have done (especially with one of my Mum’s dogs going for a bit of an extended wander too!).

Normally I relish spending lengthy amounts of time in woodland (known as I am for my tree hugging tendencies) – especially ancient English woodland full as they tend to be of different tree species (don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of Alpine, but the clue’s in the name!!).  Plus of course Saturday was the Autumn Equinox, heralding the time of year that England probably does the very best…  But on this particular occasion, I was in a bit of a rush to get going…

The roads in this part of Hampshire are scarily thin.   The kind of windy country roads that have you praying that you don’t meet anything coming in the other direction (especially if your reversing skills leave a lot to be desired if it requires you going backwards for more than five metres!) whilst you are moving (and when you are not).    Except that we did meet something else in the road, it was just not entirely what we were expecting.

As we turned a corner, we were suddenly met with what I can only describe as a huge pair of eyes looking dazed,  confused and rather sorry for herself in the middle of the road.

This beautiful Red Kite (I have mentioned I was in the Young Ornithologists Club before now haven’t I??) had obviously been clipped by a car.    It wasn’t too long before we managed to flag down a farmer (who happened to have a sturdy pair of gloves about his person) who looked wise and knowledgeable about such things.  He picked her up, had a quick look, told us she was sadly not long for this world, and placed at her at the side of the road to let nature take its course.   And that was that.  Except I didn’t want it to just be that.

Despite assurances that nothing could be done, I vowed that if she was still there and alive when we came back from our walk, I would somehow (I just hadn’t worked out how) get her and take her somewhere (which I also hadn’t worked out)…  Hence the rush.

As soon as the sweet chestnut collector had been placated over his walk being somewhat hurried towards the end, and with my Mum in on our plan – and also the provider of a dog towel that we could use to capture this magnificent creature if necessary, we were on our way.    We found the gate the farmer had placed our feathered friend next to, and as we slipped and squelched through mud to get to her, I really hoped she wasn’t dead whilst wondering why on earth these things tend to happen to us, and why we can’t just go for a normal walk…

As we got closer, she made a desperate attempt to get airborne, with results similar to those people you see trying to fly off the end of a pier in some homemade cardboard flying machine.    And so our decision was made.   Mr R threw the trusty (quite stinky) dog towel over her, and passed her to me standing on the other side of the fence.  Now aware of two very sharp claws and a very fierce-looking beak inches away from my face, I gently wrapped her up like a weird feathery baby and we placed her carefully in the boot…

Moments before our big bird rescue, Mr R had remembered that the quite brilliant Hawk Conservancy was just a few miles up the road, so that’s where we were headed.   Opening the boot at the other end was slightly worrying, but thankfully we weren’t met with an angry fully recovered bird of prey, just those big sad eyes looking slightly indignant the whole being wrapped in a dog towel thing.

I had half expected to just do a swift handover at that point, but we were invited inside whilst they checked her over, weighed her, and took details as to where we found her and what had happened.   The Toddler (who had forgotten all about his green and spiky haul in exchange for this dazed feathery one) was in awe of what was going on, and made great suggestions of how she could be fixed with feathers from the display in the window, and after being quiet (unusual) for a short while asked whether she was frozen – which, as she was completely stunned, I guess in a funny kind of way she was…

The nicest thing about our strange day full of collecting things?   If/when she makes a recovery, we will be invited to help release her back where we found her again!  I will keep you posted…