Majestic Birds

I love that Cornwall is full of tight little lanes. I know the tourists quake at the thought of our solid hedges (they look like bushes but don’t be fooled), but I do enjoy the twists and turns. Though having said that you do have to be ready for anything!

The other night when driving home I had to slam on my brakes as a bird of prey pounced out from the hedge on my left, just missing my car as he climbed higher and higher. Apart from scaring the living daylights out of me, it was an epic sight to behold. I could see his full wingspan across my windscreen as he flew away.

It just reminded me how much I love these majestic birds, often circling so far overhead. Its stripey wings were simply stunning. Now, to me, this bird seemed massive, but compared to some I am sure it wasn’t. But it did put me in mind of the calendar we did in 2023, collective nouns for birds.

From ‘a confusion of guinea fowl’ to a ‘lamentation of swans’, it was so much fun discovering the terms used to describe the bird kingdom. Perhaps what I saw was a falcon? A grouping of these is known as a ‘cast’, as if gathering for some piece of theatre out on the moors. Peregrine falcons are famously fast, with one recorded diving at 242 mph!

One that we couldn’t quite fit in our poster calendar was the Golden Eagle. We picked 12 illustrations, one for each month, and this impressive bird sadly didn’t make the cut. Carl’s son Rufus just loves this particular bird, so I illustrated his very own version just for him. We included it in our end of year newsletter too. They are impressive to behold I am sure, powerful enough to prey on foxes and with a wingspan that can exceed 2 metres. A fact I loved about them though is their faithfulness: they usually mate for life.

A group of Golden Eagles is called a convocation; sounds important, doesn’t it? Their huge nests are known as eyries and, rather wonderfully, traditional nesting places can be used by successive generations.

We are busy working on our 2027 calendar, all to be revealed soon! I think we will probably revisit collective nouns again though as they are such fun, some you don’t even think about. A flight of stairs, an armoury of aardvarks, a shrewdness of apes and an embarrassment of pandas!