Wild Cranes

Hanna and I had an unexpected afternoon off today and decided to escape our chores and get outside. We plumped for either the National Trust's Anglesey Abbey gardens where there would be autumn colour and a smart cafe, or the flat, half tamed wilderness of the Cambridgeshire Fens where a loo and a brew were out of the question. We opted for the fens because I had heard that no less than 20 wild cranes were feeding in field near Whittlesey.

The venue was described as "a field opposite the Chill-Out Cafe," so we punched the postcode into the Sat-Nav and headed out to join a convoy of tractors and white pick-ups on a causeway across  black and peaty fields where carrots, sugar beet and onions are grown on a massive scale. Sales reps in BMWs played chicken on the wrong side of the road to gain that essential extra 30 seconds on their journey between deals, but the lorries and tractors seemed impervious to their needs. We drove past enormous wind-farms and, as the light shifted from afternoon to premature dusk and back again, the slowly spinning turbines switched from white to blue/grey. Later, as we drove home, they would turn orange/pink as the sun set like a fat blood-orange in the west.

The fens were designed by the Dutch in the 18th century and they would have ideally liked to use a grid system as they did in New Amsterdam, now New York City. The result is a lot of straight lines running north/south or east/west but the rivers Ouse and Nene slash diagonally across the grid from WSW to ENE as they head, ever so slowly, towards the Wash. We bounced around the washes on straight, narrow, corrugatred causeways set on soft ground.

Most of the corners are right angles marked by bunches of flowers that are left in remembrance of those young drivers who forgot to turn the corner and ended up in deep water. Fen drains are unforgiving "wet fences" with steep banks falling into very deep water and many of them are followed by roads or droves. If you skip off the road, you will probably drown.

Of course we survived the journey and arrived at the Chill-Out Cafe. It was very quiet and we didn't go in, so I can't tell you what was on offer inside. Instead, we parked on the forecourt and looked south across the flat, green fields. It didn't look promising at first, but we scanned the horizon and saw a ridge in the distance. That flood-dyke marks the northern edge of the Nene Washes where floods are tolerated, perhaps even encouraged, to prevent the loss off all the surrounding rich agricultural land that lies below or near sea-level.

The real thrills lie beyond the dyke, but birds, animals and people are opportunists and we all explore the margins. Fortunately, cranes are huge birds and they are coloured pale grey so they stand out in the landscape in the same way that cattle, sheep and goats do. We spotted a large flock in a black field between the dyke and a large dairy farm. Our best opportunity to view the birds lay on the hard-standing in the farmyard, but this was private ground.

We called at the farm bungalow to ask permission to stop and were greeted by a pretty red-haired Irish girl who was minding the farmer's children. She sent us across the yard to see John the farmer, but he was very occupied in milking about 40 cows. We decided to chance it and were rewarded by distant views of perhaps half the flock of cranes and a close views of chaffinches, sparrows and wagtails.

After perhaps 30 minutes we moved round to the south side of the washes, onlys two miles away as the crane flies, but this involved a long drive west, south, then east again. (Bridges are obviously too expensive to waste on bird-watchers). On the way we discovered an ancient Abbey at Thorney.

The village of Thorney lies on the outskirts of Peterborough. We followed signs to the Abbey Church but on the way it was obvious that this was a special place with rows of gothic terraced alms houses with tall chimneys, leaded windows and high gable ends. The abbey itself was a potted history of religion in England with Roman, Saxon and Norman origins overlaid with the perpendicular simplicity of the Reformation as well as the vandalism of Cromwell's Commonwealth that removed almost all the sculpture and stained glass.

As the sun was about to set, we cast about for a narrow drove-road that would take us out into the wash. After several unsuccessful attempts we found a track that led past a tractor dealership and some isolated dwellings to give access for graziers into the marshes. The road ended in a car park that gave wide views over arable land, grazing marsh, scrub and isolated woody copses. Reassuringly, there was a pick-up truck occupied by a man with a telescope clamped to the door and two other cars bearing RSPB stickers.

The first cold wind of winter kept us in the car for a while but the yelps of whooper swans lured us out into the open. Small flocks of these Icelandic visitors were drifting back and forth across the fen, vocally keeping in touch with each other as they passed. Then Hanna spotted a male hen harrier that was gliding into the marsh on lifted wings. Just seeing a hen harrier is a major achievement as it is one of Europe's rarest birds, but adult males are exceptionally rare and fine to look at. While the females and young are brown with a white rump and barred tail, the males are pale grey, black and white, almost gull coloured. They sail low across the marsh like kites.

Our male was soon joined by two enormous dark-coloured marsh harriers and a striking ring-tailed female hen harrier, but our colleagues were watching a young barn owl that was struggling to swallow a rat that it had caught in the farmyard nearby.

As the sun set, the full moon rose and we navigated our way back through the flat, black fields towards the high ground at Ramsey Heights, just above sea-level, and so to home.