Road kill

It was a heart-stopping moment when the barn owl appeared. 

I was driving early morning across the moors when it rose from the field and swooped along the hedgerow fringing the road.   Quite a rare sight, even in Somerset, and one that brought me an inexplicable surge of pleasure.

It’s been an unusually harsh winter, but the owl and, hopefully, its mate had survived.

Two hours later, I drove back and saw a mass of whitish-brown feathers flattened on the road.

The bird had coped with snow, below-zero temperatures and weeks of cold winds.  But not a speeding car.