LETTERS

Bird crashes

Terry Warburton’s letter about the imprint of a bird on his window [FT400:74] reminded me of a similar experience. About 10 years ago my wife and I visited Burford Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire. Walking around, we came to a large slab of glass. I forget what it was for – I think something, a map perhaps, was engraved on it – but my attention was drawn to a perfect imprint of a pigeon at about eye level. Slightly higher, to the right of it, was the imprint of a falcon, or some similar predator. At the base of the glass slab were both birds, quite dead. We stood there for while, and a keeper came bustling along to remove the corpses. We spoke to him about it and it seemed that it was something that happened every now and then when a pigeon was being pursued by a predator, but it was rare for both birds involved to suffer the same fate.

Laurence Stockdale

By email

I was doing some washing up at the kitchen sink a couple of years back when a bird flew into the window. I went outside to see if it was injured, but it was nowhere to be seen. However, a hedgehog had become stuck in the kitchen sink drain cover, which I had removed earlier for cleaning and not replaced. I managed to get it out with no apparent ill effects. Did the bird try and warn me? I like to think so.

Peter Jackson

St Ives, Cambridgeshire

Editor’s note: FT has often been sent dramatic examples of avian window prints. For our first examples, see FT63:6.

Dire Wolf

There’s a more tangible connection to cryptozoology on the Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead album [FT400:24-25] – the song title ‘Dire Wolf’. ‘Brown-Eyed Women’ on Europe ‘72 mentions “Bigfoot County”, which has given its name to a Grateful Dead tribute band (see downtownroanoke.org), and the Dead also covered Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’ in the late Seventies (see Dick’s Picks, Volume 25, for example).

Richard George

St Albans, Hertfordshire

Feline revenant

Seventeen years ago my father wrote an account of an experience he had with a ghostly cat, which was published in .This has been spoken of many times within my family over the years, especially as he died less than two years after his letter was printed, but unfortunately we never kept the issue. I was an subscriber from about the age of 15, which is how my father came across the magazine. However, I fell away from it about six years ago and did not buy an issue until three months ago, when I decided to subscribe again.To then see this long lost account], was a pleasant surprise for my family and me. I’m not sure if it was fate or coincidence that drew me to pick up your magazine again, but it certainly felt like there was something pushing me back here. So thank you.