Would-be Windhover
Would-be Windhover – Ancaster Weatherbed Limestone – 9″ x 4″ x 7″
At the moment I’m listening to the Kestrel chicks in the nest box at my workshop. Each day their pips and calls get louder, and more recognisably bird of prey. Their shuffling more frequent and noisy.
They’ll start putting their heads out of the nest box entrance hole very soon and see the outside world, the one they’re going to launch themselves out into. And I’ll get a glimpse of their fluffy, innocent faces. They’ll get their bearings.
This early, mild appearance seems a wilderness away from the keen eyed Falco tinnunculus flying into the wind, soaring and expertly hovering before ambushing prey. But they grow into it very fast.
For this sculpture I wanted to capture that very short time of young bird, before the flight feathers are fully formed, before instinct urges it on to its very specific wild falcon wildness and the glint in its eye confirms its wariness of me.