P.S.  She might have cried at the sight of the poor dead salmon - but at least it was dead already.
Sidonie holds the prey down with her talons stuck in its body, plucks it first, gouges out the eyes, then tears pieces off whilst it lies there helplessly and screams in pain.  I know this from several abortive attempts at rescue and one successful one - but I really shouldn't have  - as it was too far down the line.  I ended up with a dreadfully injured pigeon with one eye, half of its feathers missing, huge wounds in its body - staggering round my garden for ages until finally it gave up and died.  There was nothing I could do for it and I know I should have put it out of its misery, but I'm always afraid of not doing the job properly and injuring it further.  It staggered up to the fountain and managed to have a drink before going behind a bush to die.  It's just so awful watching something being ripped to bits and dying by inches whilst making the most heart-rending noises.

I hate nature. 

Red in tooth and claw... Probably won't help, but as D.H. Lawrence put it -

"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."

That must simplify life quite a lot.

Those feathers would mean nothing to the birds, because they aren't alive. When one of my cats was killed on the main road, we thought we should show him to his twin brother, just to tell him he was dead. Twin cat took no interest at all in the dead cat, clearly didn't even recognise him. I never forget that, it was a lesson in how unimportant the body is - the real person (or cat!) is the not the physical form.

I feel the same Milly, but if you think of it the birds of prey have only beak and claws to do the job, I doubt they could kill instantly.
I hate to see anything killed, I was always considered slightly odd in my job as a teacher ( well for other reasons too really!!!!) as I wouldn't allow insects of any description to be killed in my classroom... including wasps. The system was that the student would put up a hand and say loudly 'Wasp' and I would come and sort it out. The funny bit was that I often had the fire exit open in summer for ventilation and I used to say to the wasp , very loudly , 'Out' and point at the door. Many times it used to just fly out !!!!!

A

On the subject of birds of prey, here's one I snapped from a moving car a couple of years ago (it's OK, I wasn't driving) on a B road the other side of Dundee  - the River Tay is just a short way beyond the railway line. I think it's a harrier, but if anyone can come up with an alternative I'd be very interested to hear it. If you look up towards the top right hand corner, its mate seems to be hovering.

Great photo, Ron. Those ones taken from a moving car can be quite tricky.




I'd vote for male hen harrier (and friend) too. 

There was a song thrush in my pear tree today. It sat very, very still for what seemed like a very long time. I was delighted to see it, hadn't seen one for quite a while, and they used to be as common as blackbirds. It must have noticed the huge number of snails in the garden. Glad they're of use to someone. (Can a bird be someone? You know what I mean.)

Ooh, it's now walking about outside the window