‘A whole sky to dance in’: My week as a marsh harrier

I thought my skydancing days were over. I danced last year and I was fairly reasonably magnificent, but never dreamed of doing so again. I thought it was a one-off. But today, quite suddenly, the whole world was different. A whole world to dance in. Better than that: a whole sky to dance in.

Monday
We harriers are, though I say it as shouldn’t, seriously good fliers.But we’re not flashy. We fly very low and very slow: the hardest double to pull off. I hold my wings in a dihedral, a shallow V that gives me stability and a tendency to revert to straight and level flight after a wobble. Humans nicked the idea for their airliners.

Tuesday
That low, slow, quartering flight is what gives us this day our dailyfrog. Or rodent or bird. Even the odd fish. It’s a flight for the connoisseur,caviar to the general. But today I found myself looking down at theground hundreds of feet below. I had risen in a tight spiral for no reason at all, and at the very top I thought about diving flat out at the ground, just because I could. I restrained myself, for no one of importance was looking. And as I made a more rational descent I wondered: what the hell’s come over me?

Wednesday
I’d seen her throughout the winter, noticed her, even admired her big brown wings, her creamy head. But today it was like seeing her forthe first time. She was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Or at least since last year.

Thursday
Now I know what’s come over me. Spring! It’s as if someone had thrown a switch: suddenly all I can think about is female marsh harriers, especially that one. I’ll win her with my skydance as soon as the opportunity presents itself. I’ll climb till no one on the ground can see me, I’ll scream and plummet and stall-turn and barrel-roll. She’ll join me and we’ll clasp talons and fall like a giant shuttlecock till we reluctantly let go a few inches from the ground. And then – well, what else would anyone do in spring?

Friday
We marsh harriers have gone through our bad times. We went extinct in this country in the 19th century – bloody gamekeepers – made a comeback and then got knocked back to a single pair in 1971. Bloody DDT that time. But there might be as many as 600 nests this year. All we need is good wetland to hunt over and no nonsense from humans and their guns and their dogs.

Saturday
Another female has turned up. She’s one of the old school that stillgoes to Africa for the winter. And she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Or one of them. Damn it all: I’m a bird in my prime and I’m good enough to cope with not one female but two, not one nest but two, not one brood of chicks but two. Forget the hard years – up into the skies. I’m dancing and I can’t be bothered now.

Marsh harrier CV

Lifespan six years or so
Eating habits water-lovers
Hobbies quartering
Sexual preferences creamy-headed ladies

Photograph by Manjeet and Yograj Jadeja / Alamy Stock Photo