A Siege of Bitterns

by Steve Burrows

  Jejeune felt the boardwalk move with the pressure of another set of footfalls. Quentin Senior joined them at the railing, watching the Mallards dabbling among the weeds.

  “Ah, Inspector and reluctant companion. Still fighting the call, I take it.” He smiled indulgently at Lindy. “Only a matter of time, my dear. You have that intellectual curiosity, you see, that need to define. The challenges of bird identification are but a step away.”

  “When you see a herd of pigs soaring above this marsh, Mr. Senior, that’s the day I’ll become a birder.”

  Senior barked a short laugh of delight. “A drift, Ms. Hey. A collection of pigs is a drift. At least, on the hoof, that is. Not so sure it would apply on the wing. Still, deny it if you like. You mark my words; I have an eye for a latent birder. We’ll have you decked out in olive green yet.”

  Lindy looked at the Mallards. “They’re so pretty. I love the way the sun makes their necks shimmer.”

  “Indeed. Look at this one, down here below us, working away, completely oblivious to us, not a care in the world. This was how it all started for us, wasn’t it, Inspector? Watching a few birds, wanting to know a bit more about them. Before we all got caught up in lists and numbers and races to four hundred and all that nonsense.”

  “But surely you’ll carry on trying to reach four hundred?” said Lindy. “After everything you’ve put into getting this far.”

  “I suppose I will. Though I must admit there is something missing now that Cameron is no longer in the race.” He shook his head softly at some private memory. “You know, I sometimes think as we get older we lament the passing of our rivals every bit as much as that of our friends. And ours was quite a rivalry, I can tell you. Even if it was not quite worth killing over.”

  Senior smiled to show there were no hard feelings. But Jejeune knew Danny Maik had been following reasonable suspicions. Even if Senior had eventually been proven innocent, neither Maik, nor anyone else in the department, had anything to reproach themselves for. Nevertheless, Jejeune was glad Maik’s suspicions had proven groundless, all the same.

  “I suppose with Cameron Brae gone, it’s the end of an era.” said Lindy suddenly.

  Senior nodded. “In one way, perhaps, but one of the joys of our pastime is that new blood is always coming through, younger, keener, and certainly with a damned sight better hearing and eyesight. Look at young Duncan, for example. Breathing down my neck already, and he has nearly two decades on me. I may well be the first to four hundred, but I doubt my record will last for long. Not that I’d mind handing the mantle over to Duncan one day. He’s an excellent birder. In the truest sense. Understands them, loves them for what they are, not as a tick on his list. Always talks about seeing a bird, or at worst hearing one. Never hear him going on about ‘having’ birds, you know, ‘had a Yellowhammer yesterday.’”

  Lindy nodded to herself. She and Domenic had had a similar discussion a few days before, about two friends of theirs who were looking for a new holiday destination, having “done” North America last year.

  Jejeune saw her tacit agreement and he smiled to himself. Despite their differences, he suspected the more time Lindy and Senior spent with each other, the more common ground they would find. Both had such a certainty about life, a conviction of how things should be, a conviction he could only dream of possessing.

  “So there never were any American Bitterns here?” Lindy was peering into the reeds, though whether it was in hope or just curiosity wasn’t really clear.

  Senior shook his shaggy white mane. “Not this time. But there will be, one day. You mark my words. Everything comes to Cley, they say. And points around.” Senior lifted his binoculars for a lazy scan across the marsh. “Bitterns and bitterns, eh, Inspector? We’ve had quite a siege of them lately.”

  “And that’s about the biggest mystery of all, as far as I am concerned,” said Lindy. “Why a siege, for God’s sake?”

  Senior smiled. “Ah well, you would have to ask Juliana de Berniers. She’s the one who first catalogued these wonderful collective nouns. Some do say it’s a corruption of sedge, but there are enough strange entries in Ms. de Berniers’ Book of St Albans to suggest that it was probably siege right from the beginning.”

  “But why have a collective noun for bitterns at all,” asked Lindy, “if it’s so unusual to see more than one at a time? I mean, nobody’s ever felt the need to come up with a collective noun for intelligent men, have they?”

  Senior barked his delighted laugh again. “Ah well, I suspect it’s back to the dinner table for that one. As in, I understand you are entertaining tonight, my Lord, I’ll have cook prepare a siege of bitterns for your supper. But it’s an interesting question. And that’s exactly why we need bright new minds like yours in our ranks. Old hands like myself and the inspector here, we tend to simply accept the incongruous wisdom of our pastime without questioning it.”

  It’s her energy, thought Jejeune, this connection she has with older men: Senior; Coulter, the desk sergeant; Eric, the Illiterate Halfwit Editor. Few men in their later years could help being attracted to such a stunningly beautiful young woman, but it was more than that. It’s her vibrancy, her positivity. It restores their faith in life. It reminds them that there are still some things worth believing in, however much their own romances or careers or lives have failed to deliver on their dreams.

  “My interest is purely etymological, I can assure you,” said Lindy. “It has nothing to do with birding at all.”

  “My heart in hiding, Stirred for a bird, eh, Inspector?” said Senior with a wink. His smile held a flicker of regret, despite his jocular tone, and there was a hint of sadness behind the bright blue eyes. “You’ll have read the ministry’s decision.”

  Jejeune nodded. In an effort to aid the natural regeneration process, the government was proposing to designate the lands surrounding Lesser Marsh and Great Marsh as an Area of Special Protection. It was likely the entire area was going to be off limits to the general public from now on. Not exactly the expropriation Largemount had feared, but largely the same result anyway. It was the final irony in a case riddled with them.

  Senior sighed. “An AoSP. Still, a few signs, a few fences. People will still enter if they want to. Certainly they would to see an Ivory Gull. How often do they occur here, once every thirty years or so? Perhaps the marshes will be fully restored to health by the time the next one shows up, and they’ll be letting people back in.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Lindy looked up. “Have you ever seen one, Mr. Senior?”

  He nodded. “Once. A long time ago. Up in the Hebrides. Beautiful bird. Unmistakable, eh, Inspector?” He smiled at Jejeune, taking in his sad expression. “Don’t worry about this place. Thirty years is a mere spit in the ocean for Great Marsh. And when it has recovered, the birds will come back, too. Let’s not forget, when Dr. Long bought the marshes at Cley, Avocet, Marsh Harrier, and Bearded Tit had already been lost as breeding birds. And the Bittern.”

  “But, surely, they’re all here now, aren’t they?” She turned to Jejeune. “I’ve heard you talk about them,” said Lindy.

  “Recolonized by birds from the Netherlands,” said Senior with quiet satisfaction. “Great Marsh will recover. Don’t you worry. I might not be here to see it, but you will. And your young ’uns, should you be so blessed.” Senior straightened up from the railing. “It’s this area, you see, the birds and the people, we’re all intertwined, caught up in one another’s history. We could never let it perish, a place like this.”

  The family of Mallards had lost interest in the weeds and moved off toward the reed beds on the far shore, motivated by invisible forces, beyond the senses or understanding of humans. Jejeune took another long look at the marsh, at the freshwater reeds, and the brackish scrape beyond, at the tidal salt marsh with its sinuous creeks snaking out between the dunes to the beach, and, finally, to the sea. Links and divisions, interconnections and separations, all borne of a dependence on each other and a
necessity to maintain the balance, to continue the process, to preserve the cycles that had been going on here for millennia.

  Well, I’d best be off,” announced Senior, suddenly having found the resolve to detach himself from Lindy’s presence. “There’s a report of a Thrush Nightingale down at Stiffkey. Probably nothing, but I thought I’d better go along to check it out. Don’t suppose you would be interested in accompanying me. Either of you?”

  To Lindy’s surprise, Jejeune declined. “Perhaps later,” he said. “For now, I think I’d like to stay on here a while. As you say, around here, you never know what might turn up.”

  The Bittern

  The Eurasian (or Great) Bittern, Botaurus stellaris, was once widespread in the lowlands of the U.K., but hunting and habitat loss led to the species’ extirpation by the late 1880s. In the early twentieth century, the species returned to Britain, and by mid-century numbers had increased encouragingly. However, numbers began to decline again, and by 1997 just eleven males, at seven sites, were known to exist. Only a concerted effort to restore and create reed beds saved the species from a second U.K. extinction. Since 1997, numbers in the U.K. have continued to rise. Because the birds are secretive by nature and difficult to observe, counts are extrapolated from the distinctive “booming” vocalizations of individual males. In 2012, 106 males were recorded from 53 sites, suggesting an overall resident U.K. population in excess of 200 birds.

  However, the birds’ future in the U.K. is far from secure. Bitterns require freshwater habitat, but many of the U.K.’s largest reed beds are in coastal East Anglia, and are highly vulnerable to tidal inundation. Bittern habitat is also under pressure from a number of other sectors, including the thriving thatching industry. Clearly, there is still much work to be done if we are to save this iconic wetland species.

  Fortunately, there are now a number of habitat conservation and creation schemes in operation around the country. New reed beds are being created farther inland and existing reed beds are being expanded. This work offers much hope for the future of the U.K. population, but it is time-consuming and demanding work. In addition to monitoring the birds’ numbers and breeding patterns, regular audits must also be conducted of water quantity and quality, reed extent and structure, and fish and amphibian populations. Much of this work is done by volunteers.

  The U.K. Bittern Monitoring Programme is funded by RSPB and Natural England as part of its Action for Birds in England (AfBiE) project. For further details, or to support the important work of conservation initiatives, please visit the Natural England website at www.naturalengland.org.uk or the RSPB website at www.rspb.org.uk.

  Copyright © Steve Burrows, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editors: Allison Hirst and Sylvia McConnell

  Design: Jennifer Scott

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Burrows, Steve, author

  A siege of bitterns / by Steve Burrows.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0843-3 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4597-0844-0 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4597-0845-7 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8603.U74745S54 2013 C813’.6 C2013-905467-7 C2013-905468-5

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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