View from the Shed by Shaun Finnie - YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

I was sitting at the Reedbed Screen here at Old Moor, scanning the sea of gently swaying reeds in the hope of seeing a kingfisher, bearded tit or maybe even an elusive bittern. Anything really, it didn't matter. I was just pleased to be out on a mild end-of-the-year day, away from the stresses of home or office.

I try not to take my birding too seriously. Of course I'm really pleased if I unexpectedly see something unusual, like the Jack Snipes or Spoonbills that temporarily visited the reserve over the last few months, but I'm not devastated if I don't see something that I'd hoped for. I'm a mild-mannered birder, unlike the hopeful birder who came bursting out of the nearby Reedbed Hide, ranting and swearing that his particular target bird had failed to show.

“I thought they had bitterns here,” they complained, throwing their arms in the air in desperation. “I've been sat in there for three-quarters of an hour and... nothing!”

I tried to be understanding and offer some words of support before returning to my porthole in the screen. Three-quarters of an hour is nothing, I thought to myself. I have a friend who has been looking for Bitterns for years without any success. He's so unlucky in sighting this particular species that we have a standing joke between us:

Q - What's brown and invisible?

A - no bitterns.

The irate visitor grumbled on “No bitterns. Not a single one. Nobody else in the hide has seen them either. I don't think there's any here.” My gaze remained fixed on the reeds in front of me. Which is how I saw the beautiful flash of a Kingfisher. An electric blue sprite sparking along the water channel, there and then gone. Immediate and gorgeous. And, in this instance, all mine.

While their ranting threatened to scare off other birders - let alone any wildlife in the area - they failed to remember one of the most important lessons of birding; 

              'travel in hope, but take pleasure in whatever you find on the way'.

It’s important to remember what a privilege it is to be free to roam in such a glorious place, to experience nature and the almost magical randomness of what it allows us to see. Just then, a beautiful Bittern floated across a water channel between the reeds. Like a baggy brown ghost, it drifted just above reed-top level before dropping down out of sight, right where my binoculars were trained. The entire experience lasted all of three seconds. Then again, it could have been a decade. For me in that brief period, time had stopped. Just me and the bittern, trapped in the moment. Yet again, the would-be birder was thwarted by their impatience.

When I returned to planet earth, they were still venting about how terrible nature was for not giving them what they wanted, at precisely the moment they wanted it. The fact that it had done exactly that but they'd failed to notice had passed them by completely. Lesson two;

                'be prepared at all times because you might see precisely what you hope to, but not necessarily at the time or place you expect'.