NEW Street may be in the centre of Ross-of-Wye, but that does not mean it is excluded from scenes of nature in the raw.

In the latest newsletter of Herefordshire Ornithological Club, CS O'Connor Thompson describes how, on a lovely spring morning, he witnessed a female sparrowhawk plucking a woodpigeon in the road about 3 ft from the kerb.

He wrote: "Two men going about their business continued to walk along the pavement and were within 5 ft of the bird as they passed. It ignored them.

"Two cars and two noisy motor bikes passed by, the cars of necessity no more than 3 ft away and the hawk continued to feed.

"Encouraged, I moved up until I was within 10 ft and thus things continued for another 10 minutes, with me occasionally indicating to cars as they came along that they should move across to the left of the road.

"Only when a large lorry went past did the bird get nervous and it pulled its meal into the kerb. Shortly afterwards there was a stream of traffic and she flew within a couple of feet of me up the street, carrying the pigeon with her."

Not so surprising was the newsletter revealing that on January 31, 88 feral pigeons were spotted in Hereford's High Town!