I wrote this some time ago, but felt it belonged here, so it at least continued existing somewhere.
The wild and windswept marsh,
Frozen, in winters grip. Ice clings to the yellowed reeds.
The sun descends, warm orange light pierces the brown and grey
Vain hope of warmth, I clutch my thermos close, one hand on my bins
A barn owl ghosts the lodes, but my vigil continues
A cacophony in the reeds! Ducks and egrets take to the wing
And rush to flee the terror from the sky.
They saw her first. Their lives depend on being better birdwatchers than me.
She glides in low and fast, eyes scanning, held beneath high wings, dihedral.
Her tail banded, that patch of white. A ringtail!
I hold my breath. I watch.
She wasn't born and raised here, not here in Anglia's fens.
She belongs in the hills, traversing miles of purple heather.
Riding thermals, sky dancing with her mate, sleek and handsome, field grey
She belongs seizing meadow pipits on the wing
Hanging over Kinderscout, on her V-shaped wings, before plunging on a rabbit or a grouse.
She's the weathers refugee. A wild exile from the North.
I freeze, my breath caught in the air.
But here she finds warmth, and safety, and shelter from the gales.
Here she is safe, unlike the nervous ducks and moorhens she espies.
Beside the mobbing crows, or her bigger lowland cousins
That make the marsh their home, year round.
But, come the spring, when she leaves to make a home,
She runs the gauntlet of the waiting guns.
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