Country diary: the wood pigeons are on the move

Airedale, West Yorkshire A lone wood pigeon in a tree may look portly rather than predatory, but in the air even other birds can mistake it for a hawk

A grey silhouette against a linen-white November sky: pointed wings, thick torso, purposeful flight. My first instinct says hawk - maybe a peregrine, even (I saw one over the river, among the Victorian chimneys of the Lower Aire, earlier in the week). But then mind and eye resolve the image and I see the bird for what it is: a wood pigeon, southward bound.

Seen clearly, looking portly and awkward on a bird table, say, or crashing about in the woodland canopy, the wood pigeon could hardly appear less predatory. But we're not the only ones who can be fooled by that muscular flight-shape. "It sometimes has a singularly hawk-like appearance," the Victorian naturalist WH Hudson wrote. "Even the wild birds in the wood may be deceived by it, and thrown for a few moments into a violent commotion."