The Adventure of the Osprey Encounter

I always get so much benefit from spending time in nature and every so often something truly magical happens...

It was a Sunday morning and I'd arranged to meet my parents after they'd finished what they were doing in Christchurch by late morning. It suddenly occurred to me that we would be meeting quite close to one of my favourite nature reserves, a place called Stanpit Marsh, and the timing meant I could easily have a few hours wandering around there before the meet. 

I was up and out the house unusually early for the school holidays and found myself parked up with my shiny new walking boots adorning my feet. Off I went and shortly after I began walking the sun broke through the clouds, which was much needed after a gloomy week. 

Butterflies and bees flew between flowers in the hedgerows as I headed to the entrance of the nature reserve. Many people overlook the smaller side of nature but I have a special fascination with invertebrates. You only have to stop and look a sunny patch of nettles for a few minutes to see a whole world in miniature, all sorts of monsters that you wouldn't even know existed. The great thing is that there are so many species of invertebrates that even if you have a pretty reasonable knowledge of them as I am beginning to get, you still see new and different things all the time. 

Eventually I made it onto the reserve proper. Stanpit Marsh is a glorious place on the edge of Christchurch Harbour with salt marsh and reedbeds that seem to regularly attract rare birds. The marsh has a fascinating history. In this area the Bailey bridge was developed and a prototype bridges one of the channels in the marsh. The Bailey Bridge was a lightweight bridge that was vital in the Second World War for transporting military hardware; Field Marshall Montgomery said "Without the Bailey Bridge, we should not have won the war". There's also a lifeboat from a US WWII Liberty ship that was used by locals until a storm in 1953 swept it across the marsh where it remains to this day. 

It was pretty quiet on the marsh early on a Sunday morning with only the occasional dog walker out and about. Being in no hurry I casually wandered about, carefully making sure I didn't pass the markers that indicate the breeding bird zone where people are not permitted. There were plenty of birds around including little egrets fishing in the channels, a flock of linnets fluttering around the gorse bushes and a wheatear, a ground-dwelling bird that may have been stopping off as part of it's migration back to Africa. 

I found a bench on the river and sat for a few moments as gulls flew overhead and a group of swans noisily preened their feathers just in front of me, seemingly oblivious to my present. I sat and breathed in the fresh air and felt a serenity flow through me. Scientific research has found that being in nature can reduce blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and the production of stress hormones. To be honest, I'm not overly interested in knowing the science behind it, I just know that it makes me feel good. 

After a while I continued on and a man asked me if I'd seen any interesting birds. Though I've long spent time in nature it seems that my growing years mean that people take me seriously and I quite often find I have an unprompted conversation about the day's sightings with a random person. I always feel like I'm no expert and am out of depth to be having such a conversation but then I reply with "no, just a wheatear and a few linnets" and realise that actually my knowledge is pretty good. It's rare or unusual birds which tend to be considered interesting in the bird-watching world but in truth I find everything I see interesting in it's own way, even if it's the ubiquitous pigeon. 

With plenty of time on my hands and the marsh not being that big I realised I had more than enough time to walk a second loop of the marsh. I passed the busy hedgerows once more and once more went through the gate to the reserve. I stopped at a good viewpoint to see if any different species of birds had appeared on the distant spit. Suddenly the gathered gulls and other birds take to the wing, the sky now an explosion of movement. Something has triggered this mass exodus, the primitive fight or flight mechanism that could potentially stop these birds become something's lunch. 

I looked around, hoping I might see a buzzard but suspecting that the mass panic was due to an unscrupulous dog owner letting their canine run amok through the nature reserve, an event which is sadly all too common. But then I spotted amongst the fleeing flocks a bird much larger than anything else in the sky. It might have been quite high up but I could clearly see the long, angular wings, the dark top and the white underparts and two huge talons clutching a fish that was so big it wouldn't fit in most fishmonger's displays. An osprey!

I've wanted to see an osprey for some time and every time I've been in a place where they've recently been seen I always seem to hear "it was here this morning" and am left gazing out at an empty sky. The species, like most birds in the UK, has declined but in recent years a number of relocation programmes have taken place in an attempt to help the species spread further, including one not far away in Poole Harbour. It felt like only a matter of time before I saw one but I still hadn't expected it to be today.

I do quite like seeing species I've not seen before but after a while the only new things you tend to see are not particularly inspiring. It's all very well seeing a Napoleon's gull for the first time but it's still basically the same bird you've seen thousands of times before. The osprey was different though. Up above me was millions of years of evolution in action, every part of the bird perfectly suited to life as a fisher. I watched as it circled the area a few times, only needing to flap it's wings occasionally being so adept a flyer. All the time it still had the absurdly huge fish clutched in it's talons, demonstrating a huge power. I think for a human a fish of that size would be pretty heavy but this bird was holding it whilst flying through the sky as if it was the easiest thing in the world. 

I don't think my words can really do the experience justice. As I said, I get a lot of benefit from spending time in nature but sometimes you experience a moment that feels magical. That majestic bird soaring there was utterly beautiful and it was profound. It's so easy to become lost in your own problems and dwell on the misery the world is suffering but in an astonishing moment like this I find myself transfixed and mesmerised by the beauty of the world.