This piece was written in the summer, inspired by a writing workshop run by Nicola Chester. I’ve only just got round to posting it here.
Summer has finally arrived in the Chalke Valley, bringing its bottom-of-the-biscuit tin scent. A heat haze trails across High Lane’s sun-scorched verges; all brittle yellow and brown. Yet, the brightness of oxeye daisies mixed with trailing strands of common vetch, are refreshing glugs of a cool drink on a hot day. My eye is pulled from the rippling air by another movement.
A small movement, from a small bird.
Ahead, on treacle tarmac that cracks and oozes like a flapjack fresh from the oven, a pied wagtail scurries in Morse code dots-and-dashes to the road’s edge. Here lies a less summery sight. Slumped against the bank is the body of a rabbit, a strange contradiction of velvet-soft rigidness. Its once clean cottontail now changed to the colour of stale cream, with smears of rotten-strawberry red clinging to it.
In its solemn suit of shadow black, daisy-white, and all the grey in between, the wagtail felt like a suitable attendee. Conducting last rites for the poor creature as the grasses bowed their heads in respect, and a whispering breeze gave voice to their mourning.
Why else would a pied wagtail be in attendance? They don’t eat carrion. They are not like the magpies who will come later; or the red kites that circle above with keen eyes, picking out breaks in the road’s uniform shade.
As the bird leapt no more than a ruler’s length into the air, fanning its tail and fizzing its wings, I realised it wasn’t here for funerary rites, or carrion-craving tendencies. It was hawking for flies. Flies that droned drunkenly in crooked circles above the rabbit’s lifeless limbs. The pied wagtail deftly plucked them from the air, with the ease of a shopper lifting tins from supermarket shelves.
Even in nature’s darkest moments, in its grimmest forms and all the glistening redness of tooth and claw, there is life. And surrounding it are the creatures ready to seize opportunity. Like this pied wagtail, who is much more than just a small, delicate, pretty bird. It’s a clever one as well.