Potters Bar & Barnet Local RSPB Group

Every Cloud Has One

by Ray Ellis

I need a holiday, Dear” she said.  Now this I don’t like to hear.  I’m a homing bird, not one of those who wings off at the drop of a feather to treeless beaches and foreign seeds.  Besides, I’ve got plenty of perches organised around here and the local cat is so stupid I use him for target practice.

“Do we have to?” says I, realising at once that I’d just gone a twig too far.

“Yes we do!” she boomed back at a level never achieved by any bittern.  “And I don’t mean Trafalgar Square this time!”  Then came the usual litany ….. (heard it all before, haven’t we lads?) ….. Tied to the nest all day; never appreciated; not had a new tail feather for years ….. coo, coo, coo.  Obviously time to back off, so I start to think about flight plans, wind speeds, luggage weight, etc.

“Where to?  You choose” I offer in my new-found co-operative mood.  “Spain would be nice” she replies with that faraway look usually reserved for springtime arrangements (you know what I mean).  I should have immediately known better but that look often overcomes common sense.

We took off in the morning mists flying in formation, with her on my left and the youngest squab and the three teenagers on my right.  Everything went fine across the Channel and most of the time over France, but as we

entered Spanish airspace there began a shotgun barrage defying description.

I remember my great, great, great grandfather telling me how the Nazis tried to stop him carrying messages in the 1940s but I doubt it compared to this.

With one wing badly damaged and two toes missing I wasn’t completely sure of what was going on.  I gave an urgent flight command to head west and return home over the sea the whole way and in the clouds as much as

possible.

Well, I counted them out and now I counted them in.  The blackest day of my life.  Two squabs missing believed dead and all survivors injured in some way or other.

It is very quiet in our nest now.  I suppose we will get over it in time.  Still, she will never ask to go on holiday again so every cloud must have one.