Leighton Moss

The colours all gone out the world again. I know, I know. We’re watching marsh harriers dancing over the reeds and Christ, an otter just slithered past all casual but I’m full up. The memories are fresh and warm in each hide, in the swaying reeds, in the smell of the shiny books and t-towels you loved so much in the shop. Memories of fear, of hope, the miracle around the corner, a hand on a knee, a shared cup of tea, the finches and tits on the winter feeders. Your face alive with the power of everything that ever lived as a robin lands on your hand to feed. You came good here, each and every single time, you came good. 

On the skytower staring at some dust out west by the sea, willing it to come closer and settle over the reed bed in front. A starling murmuration we’d travelled fifty miles to see but which wouldn’t shift the half-mile up the reserve to meet us. Cruel nature. But there's not time to be missing things like this, so its down the tower and into the car, we’ll catch them near the Eric Morecambe hide. 

“Are you sure?” I say 

“Well they’re not here are they? lets go” 

“Pullover!”. A thousand, a million of them in the shape of a whale over the field. And now look, look at you. Head tipped back on the car, eyes packed full with life, lips motionless and slightly apart, begging the sky to beam you up. Throw you into that seething pack, sway this way then that back to the roost where its just you and your birds crouched under the winter sky till dawn. But your hands. Your hands are too cold, let me get you in the car and home for a bath. Maybe this was the last time we came to Leighton? I don’t know who to ask.

“What’s that, there?” Dan’s question so succinct that it must be urgent, I see a long bar flying up the lake and think black-backed gull because I’m not used to seeing ospreys. At some point we realise, there’s maybe some words exchanged but I don’t recall them because the colour’s all back in the world and this bird just tilted into a curve showing me its big brown back. Three failed attempts at catching a fish, each time banking round and flapping like a kestrel as it waits for its next moment, a call from the tower to land. We’re close enough to hear the splash and see it shaking the water from those thick feathered legs, maybe in frustration. We don’t drop our binoculars for what feels like ten minutes, swifts keep crossing in front but they’re midges now against his ungainly frame. A woman asks me if they eat mammals too and I wonder if she’s scared. I feel like we all should be, nobody move until he’s gone.

When he does leave I remember why we’re here, that the memories I’d been indulging all day were the bad ones, the in-between ones, the half-thoughts in a day otherwise perfect, they weren’t the story of this place. We came here to be lost, caught in the talons of an osprey and dragged off to a place where all that ever shines is the feathers of a bird, no strip lights or bleached floors, no glasses hanging from the neck of that no-hope consultant as he pauses over your blood results. No, not lost. We came here to be found, picked up from the debris of your illness and laid out in a winter sun, tenderly brought round from the dizziness of loss.

Dan and I wander on through some woodland that’s thick and sticky with spring growth. We don’t say much and it reminds me of the silences with you, respectful of that bird and the time we both needed to recover from it.

The evening is chirping-in at the car-park, blackbirds singing above the slamming doors as we throw our things in the boot. We’re not done, away to Foulshaw Moss to chase this osprey back to its nest. There’s a tower above the raised bog and some volunteers with a scope who show us what’s what before leaving. We set our scope up and watch the male perched in a tree, just a white smudge from all the way back here. Soon Dan sees him fly back over towards Leighton, sent back to do a proper job this time. We watch a marsh harrier for a while as the wind gets colder, we’re hungry but when the colours are back in the world there’s nothing to do but look and so that’s what we do, stood up there like a couple of kids with BMXs, watching the redpolls chase back and forth and letting dusk settle over us. When we finally pack up and wander back we see two greater spotted woodpeckers at their nest. After a full day peering and peeping through hides and scopes Dan is still brimming with of all the enthusiasm you’ll ever see in a person, staring at the mess of black, white and red on the tree, so much like you.