The Kite

Photo: WHB: N.Yorkshire – 2020   ©

As I watch
I marvel
In the silence
At the steady
Rise and fall
The relentlessness
Of that
Sinister hover
That searchlight gaze
The taughtness
Swoop-ready
Slight rise here
There a minimal
feathered fall
And always
The graceful motion
Governed by the gentle breeze
And those deadly eyes
Ever searching
For quarry

Oh the stillness
The forbidding silence
Alive with threat
Fine-tuned tension
So aware
Watchful
For that significant stir
in the grass below
That silent murmur
Minimal movement

No more than
a tension in the air
A breathing of the grass beneath
To excite his gaze
And trigger
His thunderbolt descent

 

Photo: WHB: N.Yorkshire – 2020   ©

Portland Bill & the Abbotsbury Swannery

[ Photo Gallery # 100 ]

Portland Bill, or The Isle of Portland, lies immediately to the east of Chesil Beach.  This area of land is not in fact an island, but a promontory, 4 miles by 1.7 miles, jutting out out into the English Channel.  It forms the southernmost point of the county of Dorset, England, and is 5 miles south of the seaside resort of Weymouth.

The ‘island’ is renowned for the quality of its limestone, formed during the Jurassic period and for many years since it has been quarried here.   Being of such excellent quality, the stone has been used extensively as a building stone in many major public buildings throughout the British Isles, such as St. Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace in London.  Portland stone has also been exported to many other countries and has been used for example in the the building of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

I have also included in my photo gallery below, a few pictures of swans from the Abbotsbury Swannery situated on the banks of Chesil Beach, just a few miles west of Portland Bill.