Another of those sober ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ moments last week, I’m afraid. It’s always sad to face up to the stories that aren’t all rainbow unicorns and beds of roses, but the fact is that’s how the universe works, so here we go.

I was out on my bike in the earlyish morning, getting some miles in ahead of several days’ forecast rain. On a nice ‘gravel’ (for which read unsurfaced) section, I came upon a farmer’s ute which had stopped alongside another farmer’s ute coming the other way. The drivers were having a chat. I skirted past, and just a few metres further up the road, I saw a bird flapping and flopping in the road — clearly injured.

I stopped to have a look: it was clearly a raptor, and a young one too — one from the class of last spring. Its barred tail and black-masked face told me it was a Hobby (falco longipennis); its awkwardly hanging right wing, bleeding at the root, told me it was badly hurt.

I managed to usher it to the side of the road, where it perched on the crank of my bike.

The farmer had a bit of a chat with me but wasn’t interested much in the bird: I suppose farmers see a lot of this kind of thing and I can’t fault him for that. Then Dani from the local general store came by and stopped. When she heard my concerns, she lent me her hoodie to put over the bird, calming it. She also recommended calling Braidwood Vets, who would have the number for the nearest Wildlife Rescue volunteer.

Long story short, a man came from nearby Majors Creek and had a good look at my bird. When I lifted the hoodie parcel containing the Hobby, it was very light — they are such finely-honed flying machines. It was quite calm until he moved the wing to get a better look, when it cried out and struggled. It took ahold of the wingtip with its own powerful yellow foot, just as we would hold a broken arm to try and relieve the pain. The man told me that the wing injury was very bad — the shoulder joint was separated — and that the creature would most likely be euthanised. Bad news, but then better than leaving the poor thing at the mercy of foxes or currawongs.

And so it goes. I finished the ride in a sombre frame of mind. Raptors are such uncompromising creatures: I have no idea what was happening in this one’s head, but its will for life was strong and it went off in the man’s ute still fiercely determined to survive, unafraid and uncowed.