
Someone spies snipe and they are so hard to find, even with direction. There are two little inlets into the reed bed and a willow tree. A teal on the tip of each inlet. Reeds cast reflection onto the rippling water and the pattern shivers. Why has snipe evolved such intricate camouflage of colour and pattern? More than another species? Intricate and beautiful. Those stripes on the snipe's head could be the straw-coloured stem of a reed. The long bill a darker stem of vegetation. Pattern on breast and belly is broken up. How ever does this intricacy evolve? It's a mystery.
We think we hear the bittern boom. A warden stands with a little group listening to a Cetti's warbler down in the reeds and throwing its voice. I glimpse the bird. Water-rail with its piglet squeal is hidden in the reed-bed, a secretive bird. Or so it is said. There's a mossy long beside a path where folk throw down bird seed and bring coal tit, marsh tit and last time a nut-hatch. Today, the water-rail of the place struts his stuff. And a field mouse scurries beneath the log.
More rain as we drive home and rain overnight, when Covid 19 is declared a pandemic. So this day at Leighton Moss is something to shore-up against uncertainties to come.