The shopping centre is busy, but not as frantic as you might expect on the last Saturday before Christmas. To me, not particularly drawn to crowds, it makes the experience less gruelling than expected; although I do turn tail when faced with a crowded Marks and Spencer’s food hall. I’m hungry and getting just a little ratty when we decide to try a restaurant on the other side of the shopping centre. It’s the perfect balm for me, situated next to a flooded gravel pit populated with mallards, mute swans, cormorants, gadwalls and black-headed gulls.
I watch a cormorant, its yellow gular pouch wobbling like a double-chin as it pops up above the surface after a dive. It seems self-assured, with its bill tilted ever so slightly upward and emotionless disc-eyes. The bird doesn’t stay up for long, a graceful dive, marked by a peaceful slop and a gentle outward rippling of circular waves. I watch for it to reappear and, as so often with cormorants, find it has popped up somewhere unexpected some distance from where it disappeared.
Most of the black-headed gulls still have just a smudge of dark on their heads, as if the caps they wear in spring have been incompletely rubbed out. But one flies overhead with a full chocolate-brown head, proof that spring is not far away even in these depths of winter.
A sharp double-noted chip from above brings a small flock of pied wagtails to my attention. They just love car parks and potter confidently between shoppers and cars. One steps out almost between our feet, one leg damaged and tailless, it seems as chirpy and bright as any of its companions. It skitters along the paving and then flies up out of the way when a child runs towards it.
Amidst all the cars, a robin sings its bittersweet carol from a bare tree. I always hope to see waxwings, another species strangely drawn to car parks in the years they flood into the east in search of winter food. No luck this time, but the robin is ample compensation.
I feel more reconciled to winter this year, the short dark days more of an interval before we revolve once again into spring. Even as we approach the shortest day and the longest night, the leaves of spring bulbs are feeling their way out of the cold earth. The trees already hold their foetus leaves in fat, glossy buds which shine when the winter sun allows. I hang onto the sight of that truly black-headed gull and the promise of a new growing season not that far away.
Mudwriter 