Foreshadowings - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 24

'He's been here for three days. If he settles it'll be the first time since
the seventeenth century.'
The bird was heading towards us. About twenty yards before it
reached the track, it turned and flapped slowly past in profile. It was
carrying a large flatfish. After another one hundred yards or so it
landed on a fencepost and started tearing at the fish.
Ritchie was, indirectly, responsible. He had reasoned that the
ospreys which had been breeding in Scotland since 1954 would
migrate along this coast on their way to and from Africa, pausing to
refuel in the estuaries and lakes. He had also guessed that the young
birds would be looking for territory. He found the tallest spruce tree
on his side of the valley, roped himself up, cut off the top and built a
wooden platform fifty feet from the ground. He covered it in twigs
and splattered white paint over it to look like droppings: this, appar-
ently, is the best means of persuading ospreys to move in.
Across the valley, from his cottage beside the estuary, a keen natur-
alist had watched these preparations. It was not long before he had
persuaded the local wildlife trust to build a platform of its own; it
planted a telegraph pole beside the railway track, and nailed a sheet
of plywood across the top.
'It was a no-brainer,' said Ritchie. 'He could choose a nice little resi-
dence deep in the woods, in the top of a tree overlooking the estuary,
or an exposed pole right next to the railway line. Of course the little
sod chose the wildlife trust's effort. Not that I'm bitter or anything.'
I was only half listening. I was still struggling to take in what I had
just seen. My heart pounded. I was filled with wild yearning: of the
kind that used to afflict me when I woke from that perennial
pre-adolescent dream of floating down the stairs, my feet a few inches
above the carpet. I had felt it only once in recent years; in fact just a
month before I saw the osprey.
Demonstrating - as I do about once a fortnight - a startling absence
of the survival instinct with which other people are blessed, I had
launched my kayak from the town beach at Pwlldiwaelod into a
ten-foot swell. On the way through the waves the boat had back-
flipped, somersaulting over me and dashing my head on the shingle. I
was lucky not to have been knocked out. Needless to say, I tried again.
This time, I broke through the waves and paddled out to sea. Now,