Night riding

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Location
London
Badgers can be remarkably fast moving. I've had a couple of very close misses with badgers that zoomed out into the road in the night. Also watch out for deer (day and night).

Moving on from owls I had a really lovely daytime encounter with a kestrel(?): It flew along just ahead of me, at my pace (maybe 25-30 kmh) quite low to the ground, flicking from side to side between the hedges. Went on for a couple of hundred metres.
Yes I was a bit scared, but it came and went very quickly. If you hit a badger I imagine it would bring you off. If you did hit one, are you likely to get attacked? I understand that when roused they can be vicious/dangerous.

Not much you can do about watching out for deer I think - day or night. They have a habit of just vaulting hedges, crossing the road, vaulting the opposite one. One did that it front of a ride I was leading once. A fair chance one of us could have been seriously injured/even killed.
 
You must have been near a falconry centre, as they're not British birds* I did a falconry day years ago where we flew Harris Hawks. Lots of fun.


*Coming over here, landing on our gauntlets. Eating our day old chicks.
I was very near the Hawk conservancy centre, near Andover. To be fair, it was the middle of the day, not at night.
 

LeetleGreyCells

Un rouleur infatigable
Actually, Owls are a bit thick. I know an animal trainer who works in the movies. She says a crow will learn a trick in a couple of days. Same trick will take an owl about three weeks. She said she always felt for the trainers working with the owls on Harry Potter.

I did the Harry Potter Studios Tour in London a couple of years ago. On the audio commentary (read by Tom Felton who played Draco Malloy) he states that it took 6 months to train the owls to swoop through the glass-less window, drop the students’ post on the table and fly out of the opposite window. It also said a raven could learn the same in 4 hours. Apparently the majority of the owl’s brain is to process the information received through the eyes.

Interesting stuff. Nature is fascinating.
 

Bazzer

Setting the controls for the heart of the sun.
Yes I was a bit scared, but it came and went very quickly. If you hit a badger I imagine it would bring you off. If you did hit one, are you likely to get attacked? I understand that when roused they can be vicious/dangerous.

Not much you can do about watching out for deer I think - day or night. They have a habit of just vaulting hedges, crossing the road, vaulting the opposite one. One did that it front of a ride I was leading once. A fair chance one of us could have been seriously injured/even killed.

I can vouch for that. I hit one when on a night ride, as it ran out from a hedge. It was like hitting a wall. Next thing I knew I was on the tarmac with (as I later discovered) a leg broken in two places.
 

Katherine

Guru
Moderator
Location
Manchester
I can vouch for that. I hit one when on a night ride, as it ran out from a hedge. It was like hitting a wall. Next thing I knew I was on the tarmac with (as I later discovered) a leg broken in two places.
Yikes!
 
Location
London
I can vouch for that. I hit one when on a night ride, as it ran out from a hedge. It was like hitting a wall. Next thing I knew I was on the tarmac with (as I later discovered) a leg broken in two places.
Cripes. It is dangerous out there. Kinda got me worried for my ride. Never thought that badgers would be possibly the main threat.
 

Bazzer

Setting the controls for the heart of the sun.
Cripes. It is dangerous out there. Kinda got me worried for my ride. Never thought that badgers would be possibly the main threat.

Neither had I.
Ironically, I had deliberately come off a main road I had intended to ride further along, because I thought a lone cyclist at 1.30am might be more vulnerable to traffic not expecting to see said cyclist.
Not that it would have made any difference at the time, because I was riding in the middle of the road anyway, as it was a narrow country lane, but in rural or semi rural areas, if it is dark and quiet or little traffic, I now always ride further away from the edge of the road than I would do in daylight and probably visually scan the edge of the road more than the road itself. Partly because of my badger experience, but also because a few times I have had startled cats bolting across, or along the road.
 
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