Thursday 1st March

Going over the moors by Shap on train to Lancaster, I saw what I first thought was an early swallow flying adeptly at about 50 ft, except I noticed the tail shape was completely wrong - shaped like a half closed fan with an almost straight edge.  All I got otherwise was a dark silhouette as the train sped on and I started to wonder about birds of prey.  The main suspect would be a female merlin, but obviously you can't get the train to go back and check.