Country diary: The comical knot achieves perfection in flight | Mark Cocker

Spurn Head, Yorkshire: They turn survival technique into an art form, flocking in dense packs, blinking in and out of viewIn their recent masterwork, The Peregrine Falcon, Richard Sale and Steve Watson devote 83 pages to this predator's diet. They let me appreciate, as I looked out over mudflats dividing Spurn from Grimsby on the Humber's opposite shore, that almost every bird here - from finch to goose - was at risk from a female falcon flying overhead.If I didn't know it was such a deadly serious business, I could have judged the differences in mood of peregrine and potential prey as comical. High above, she flew in long undulations, surging down and rising up the cold bluffs of northerly air with a windsurfer's ease. Continue reading...