A text from Michael means a good bird: a phone call means
drop your book, pick up your bins and leg it to the loch. We’re both guilty of
taking campus listing far too seriously. He has Red Kite over me and that’s a
sore spot but I’ve got Redstart over him and he’s not allowed to forget it. His
attitude is better than mine though. His bins and camera have a permanent place
in his rucksack, whereas mine live in my drawer. I’m used to not seeing
anything on campus; when I do I’m birding by bare eye. It works: Wheatear and
Waxwing didn’t escape me; but the Whooper Swans nearly did. I was out of signal
in the library, only a chance meeting with him in the corridor did I learn that
he’d found them. They were only around for the one evening.
I was midway through Paradise Lost when my phone vibrated.
It was Michael’s number but when I answered it was Melissa. ‘There’s a
Guillemot on the loch’ she said. ‘I’m coming’, I said, grabbing my bins and
keys. She giggled as I hung up.
That giggle sowed seeds of doubt. I ran anyway. Down to the
loch, aware of the likelihood that I was to run into a group of laughing
ecologists. I couldn’t see them as I ran on to the bridge. Weezing, I clutched
at the side, peered over, and splashing about in the loch I walk past every
day, was a Guillemot.
I’m not sure what I felt more: astonishment at this seabird
that had lost the sea, or gratefulness that I wasn’t the subject of a practical
joke.
In the end I went for both.
It was still present at midday Thursday.
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