I was going to begin with the crime scene. Or should that be the murder scene, for that is what it seemed to me to be. Except that is, by definition, the unlawful and pre-meditated killing of one human by another. Bird-on-bird killings are entirely run-of-the-mill, and a normal brutal part of the natural world.

Instead, after being encouraged to watch the recently made film “The Life of Chuck” by Mark in our last Agog session, I shall begin, as that story is told, at the end of my journey of discovery. By posing a question to anyone who reads this:

What bird are these interesting feathers from?

Flip them over, and this is what they look like.

How curious, and notice not only the very different coloured tips on each side of the feather, but also how they all curve one way or the other, and are all of slightly different sizes. And how, now that rain and probably saliva has dried, they reveal no hint of how they came into my possession. Congratulations to anyone who can identify their origin. For those who are flummoxed, read on a little further, and all will be revealed.

Meanwhile, before I forget, here’s the teaser video clip which Mark showed us to draw us into “The Life of Chuck”, featuring a wonderful dance routine by the (soon to die, though he doesn’t yet know it), Chuck played by Tom Hiddleston and Janice, Annalise Basso (a passing stranger who’s just been dumped by her boyfriend).  A wonderful pure fluke chance of circumstances in the film’s narrative, setting up this meeting, and this exciting improvised (not!), dancing. The amazing drummer, Taylor Gordon, who is known as the “Pocket Queen” in the real world, is clearly in “the pocket”/groove for this sequence.

Here’s the official trailer to suck you in even further.

But back to my short story.

Here is the crime scene. Which as I’ll explain, I only even discovered by a pure fluke of circumstances: another bitterly cold day (though at least without rain) with saturated land meant I’d opted to get some exercise by tidying up the many piles of rotting down cut rushes which we’d raked up in the autumn. Clothed in multiple layers to begin with, by the time I’d worked on a few piles wielding an inadequate pitchfork on the peripheral heavy sodden muck and piling it onto the heaps’ centre, I was overheating. So off came my coat, which I left on a post of the dividing fence in the distance, carrying on in the far field, before working back 90 minutes later to the streamside piles. By now I was tired and in need of climbing back up the hill for a tea break, so I first headed back towards the post to pick up my coat.

As a result, I walked across a bit of the field I’d very rarely walk over at this time of the year, and was stopped in my tracks by this sight.

A beautiful woodcock, (Eurasian Woodcock – Scolopax rusticola) lying with bright, open eye, and head turned to face me, as though about to take off – were it not for the awkward leg position, confirming that it was dead. Kneeling down, I gently moved the bird, since there were no obvious injuries. It wasn’t rigid, as one have might expected, if rigor mortis had set in. There was still muscle pliability. Some people have spent a lot of time studying measurable parameters which give a clue to how long it’s been since an animal or bird died/was killed. This link from 1984 seems to have the most information. (A Guide to Time of Death in Selected Wildlife Species). There is clearly even more knowledge of relevant changes to observe, when the animal concerned is a person. And that bright eye? Not glazed or sunken. It must have died very recently. And surely a fox or another carrion eater would have removed, or eaten the body swiftly, if this wasn’t the case?

Turning it over, it was immediately obvious that it had met a traumatic end – a large skin tear was obvious ventrally, just behind the end of its keel. The abdomen had been broached, though interestingly its breast/flight muscles – which is what humans have shot these birds for, to eat as prized winter game, over centuries, were left intact.

Standing up, and looking around a little more, I noticed a few clumps of the shorter, paler coloured grey-barred ventral feathers, spread out in a trail. In an approximate line, heading towards, and across the closest ditch, to its far bank. There, a slightly larger group of these feathers were still held together by a little skin and fascia. The W indicates wind direction, confirming the feathers couldn’t have just blown in that direction. The F.F.? indicates my theorised point of initial predator impact. After tea, I returned with my camera, and took my first set of photos. Paying no particular regard to its tail feathers which were obvious, though not outstanding in the image below.

I was beginning to think that the most likely assailant was a night flying bird, which would point towards a barn, or tawny owl. I debated what to do with the body, and decided to leave it where it was, figuring that the fox which regularly crosses this meadow at night might find it, or if not the kites or crows would surely enjoy what the unknown raptor had left behind.

Some further reading was needed, but before I headed back up the hill, I checked the other streamside meadow field, heading towards the pond for any signs of frogs beginning to spawn. And found this in the middle of the field – clearly what’s left of this freshly killed frog was one of the earlier ones heading for the pond. It didn’t make it, possibly caught by the same predator that had killed the woodcock, in this streamside meadow, which lies to the North of the woodcock meadow.

It seems that the injury pattern to the woodcock of a ventral skin tear, and removal of some of the abdominal organs is indeed typical of an owl, or other raptor hit and kill. Typically smaller birds would be carried to a post of branch for plucking and flesh tearing, rather than doing this out in the open, but a woodcock is a relatively large bird, and the culprit owl was anyway possibly weakened by many days and weeks of poor hunting opportunities. Barn owls have poor feather waterproofing, and both they and tawny owls struggle to hunt efficiently in the often strong winds we’ve experienced in recent weeks.

Barn owls will quarter fields, using their acute hearing, as much as their vision to locate potential prey. Tawny owls will also do this, but in windier weather will often choose to perch and silently look or listen for signs of a potential prey moving. The closest potential perch for either the frog, or woodcock kill, is not too far away. The other interesting factor is that there was a temporary drop in wind speeds in the early hours of Monday morning, which would have made it a perfect window of opportunity for owls to hunt more successfully.

Once the rain had eased a bit, the following morning, I returned to the scene of the woodcock kill. The first thing I noticed as I went to feed the sheep their hay in the drizzle, was that they were all in a tight group away from the feeder, and didn’t rush over to greet me – and the fresh hay. We’ve now worked out that this is a sure sign that the fox has passed through the field recently, and unsettled them. So I wasn’t surprised to see this altered scene at the sight of the kill (I returned a couple of hours later, to take these photos, once the rain had eased.)

There was nothing left of the bird. Except scattered feathers of all colours and sizes. As I took the photos, my eye was drawn to something I’d registered on the earlier morning visit, but had taken to be a bird dropping. There were a few bedraggled black feathers which looked as though they’d been dipped in white paint. Carefully I went over the pile and picked up any that I could see.

Turning them over revealed that the white tip was only on one side. On the other side, the same shaped area was a much more innocuous grey brown colour. How strange.

Further reading and back referencing my first photo of the intact bird demonstrated that these are specific feathers in the woodcock’s tail, which when displayed above its rear, fans out rather as a peacock’s can. It’s known that woodcock will display this during ‘roding’ mating flights in the spring.

However, the white splashes would be most visible from behind, or below the bird. Click here for some images. Everything about the woodcock’s wonderfully complex patterned dorsal plumage is designed for camouflage reasons, so that it avoids any of many potential mammalian or avian predators.

It was thought that the white tips might form part of a system for night-time communication between birds – perhaps simply alerting others to their presence. Or maybe even helpful to advertise to other overflying birds at dusk that a particular meadow is a good feeding location.

Another enlightening bit of research was completed only a few years ago by a British led research team which looked into which of the many birds from around the world had the brightest, most white plumage – as measured by sophisticated spectroscopy. Not swans, or snowy owls or arctic terns, or ptarmigans, but these small white patches on the woodcock tail feather tips outdid all other white bird plumage when it came to reflecting the full spectrum of visible (to us) light, which is why they look white. (“How woodcocks produce the most brilliant white plumage patches among the birds “-  Dunning; Patil; D’Alba; Bond; Gerben Debruyn; Ali Dhinojwala; Shawkey;and Jenni.)

Not content with that, they looked at the microstructure of the tail feathers and explained that there were a number of modifications which the woodcock ’employed’ to achieve such brightness. They commented in summary:

“The feathers’ diffuse reflectance was approximately 30% higher than any previously measured feather. This intense reflectance is the result of incoherent light scattering from a disordered nanostructure composed of keratin and air within the barb rami. In addition, the flattening, thickening and arrangement of those barbs create a Venetian-blind-like macrostructure that enhances the surface area for light reflection. We suggest that the woodcocks have evolved these bright white feather patches for long-range visual communication in dimly lit environments.”

I have to marvel at this anatomical detailing, and its function, for this bird whose scientific genus name dates back to the ancient Greeks who coined the word ‘skolópax’, which they used to refer to a woodcock or other similar long-billed wading bird.

Anatomy honed over about 5 to 10 million years of evolutionary history. Watch this interesting zoom based instructional video by Cody Limber, which explains the process, simply, of how the feathers grow in the first place from their follicle with such exquisite precision.

Or read here about how different feather colours can be produced by different techniques – not just pigmentation.

As well as all this, woodcock possess many additional anatomical features vital to their survival as a potential prey species:

• Their feathers have superhydrophobic water shedding capability which I referenced in my writing about the only other occasion I’ve come this close to a woodcock.
• They also have an extraordinary beak adaptation with a prehensile tip on the upper beak, which can be opened underground and which enables them to grasp (mainly) worms beneath the surface by feel.
• The bill tip is loaded with specialised sensory receptors which can detect the vibrations and movements of worms beneath the surface.
• The tongue is long and rough surfaced, which aids grasping and retrieval of slippery worms from the ground.
• Their large eyes are set further back and higher in the skull than most birds – their location and consequent nearly 360 degree vision are excellent for spotting predators which approach from any angle whilst the bird has its beak in the ground, feeding.
• Even the woodcock brain anatomy is strange – it has an upside down arrangement compared with most birds, where the cerebellum is located below the brain and above the spinal cord – probably a consequence of the large eye development and their evolved repositioning within the skull
• Not to mention their several thousand mile annual winter migration, which ‘our’ woodcock make every late autumn to reach West Wales from Eastern Europe.

I found myself having to temper the excitement of this chance discovery of a killed bird and how it led to me learning yet more about their secretive lives and adaptations, with stepping back and focusing on what had happened here:

This bird flew out at dusk, as it always would, to find food in a harsh wet environment, and with (likely) no significant warning, was hit from above by a taloned aggressor, and had its life and organs ripped from it. Just before daylight returned to the then once more stilled scene.

A brutal, sudden end for such a beautiful, secretive, rarely observed bird.

The piece of music I’m featuring at this point, has made it into my blog posts once before in a cover version by Anna Lapwood in 2024, but it seems more appropriate here, released as the composer’s official YouTube version, below: Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight”. 

It’s a composition from Richter’s second album “The Blue Notebooks”, conceived by Richter in 2003 as “a protest album about (the planned war in – sic) Iraq, a meditation on violence – both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict.” 

Its mood seems to capture the melancholic and violent elements to my short story.

Like so many vignettes of nature witnessed in this landscape, it’s likely to remain a one off event on our land. This video is of itself a moody and interesting artistic journey, leaving lots of unanswered questions hanging in the mind. The film maker succeeds in blending movement and music brilliantly. You don’t have to make it to the end to appreciate its mystery.

Before leaving this, I can vouch for the speed and shock of an owl attack on a frog, towards the end of the following short YouTube, which I made a couple of years ago. Concentrating on holding the mic, torch and looking through the viewfinder, I had no warning of the owl’s approach, until the splash and thrum of wing feathers as it took off – probably grasping a frog in its talons. Which I repeated and slowed for clarity. It made me jump out of my skin, and concluded my filming for the night as all the other frogs dived under water.

But this record is not a patch on the brutality of the real speed and violence of such a night time kill as captured on this FB clip by Everet D, Regal of a Great Horned Owl catching a skunk. Be warned – this is graphic, but gives an indication of the likely speed and violence of the woodcock kill.

Click on the link –https://www.facebook.com/groups/741298672623286/posts/9050397538379983/

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The Kill

For you, no silent peaceful death was planned.

Your whole life spent avoiding sharp-eyed foes,

Your feathered camouflage finesse secured

Your days.

 

Your nights alert, on edge for sudden threats.

Did you even know, or guess, or dream that

Life would end like this? A hit-scream-rip-tear

Kill.

 

No more probing sodden, moonless fields,

No bramble hidden, dreary days. For you

Old age was never written in wet stars.

 

Who can say who gained your loss?

Who can weigh the trade – a life shared thus?

Sharp beak or jaw-torn flesh, mere food for thought.

 

You had no name, your life was brief, yet left

A mark beyond those feathers, roughly strewn.

Bright white-tipped tail – imagined hits, unknown near-misses.

 

Is there a sadder, broken tale than this?

 

07/02/2026

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As we get closer to our first garden open weekend in about 2 week’s time, there’s no hint of a significant change in the weather patterns, but who knows, we might get a short window of brightness and whiteness, as we did a couple of days ago, when I prioritised taking some photos of completely bee-free open snowdrop flowers, which as expected, are lasting much longer than usual.

No names, except for one, but I hope you enjoy these scenes, which this year have played out with wonderful, constant thrush singing as background soundscape accompaniment.

Great news today – the heron returned to the upper pond this morning (not such good news for the frogs) but as expected after seeing this, we discovered about 48 clumps of spawn had appeared overnight. Plus the number of obvious seed grown Crocus tommasinianus flowers in the upper meadow has risen from 125 to 280 in 2 days. Their flowers might not be opening and there may be no bees yet, but spring marches on, relentlessly.