A female marsh harrier patiently works a patch of long grass within the grazing marshes at Cooling; it floats lazily low over the ground and seeks its small mammal or bird prey on which it will suddenly twist and pounce. A nearby flock of starlings seems unconcerned and moves restlessly across the short-grazed grassland ever wary of a hunting merlin.

Over the sheltered waters of the nearby bay, a large female peregrine dashes in to stoop repeatedly on an avocet flock that is sitting out the high tide; the flock lifts and swerves away in a panic and the peregrine buzzes the wheeling birds repeatedly but without success.