Leamington Bird Reserve Hide

The bird reserve is reedy and neglected with drab posters of species in the hide.

At least, they seem like birds. With graffiti, you wouldn’t want your children to look closely.

Stubbed cigarettes scar the shelf where you place your elbows as you lift binoculars.

My boys are seven and ten and unaware all the little windows have been shattered.

Before them is their mind-made Serengeti: crowned cranes, impalas, aardwolves… sycamores spring with vervet and colobus monkeys. The hide door bangs and bangs but they don’t care.

Heat-haze stirs with steenboks and klipspringers. We might as well make magic of what’s there.

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