The Marsh Flats
Low, undrained ground west of the river. Too wet for farming, too shallow for boats. The birds here are ordinary birds.
The low ground west of the river does not drain properly. It never has. Depending on the season it is knee-deep standing water or a field of sedge grass and reed that moves in wind that nobody can feel from shore. In summer, redshank and snipe. In winter, nothing visible, but you can hear movement at the water's edge if you stand still long enough.
People from Svartvik use the marsh for nothing and avoid it by habit. There is no formal reason not to walk there. The mud will hold your weight if you pick carefully. The birds are ordinary birds. The reed beds smell of salt and something underneath the salt, but that is just the sulphur in the sediment, which is natural, which everyone knows.
The moss at the eastern edge is the wrong colour for the time of year. It has been that colour since late autumn, which is when the colour usually turns, except it is not turning back now that it should. A retired biology teacher who lives on the road near the marsh has been photographing it since December. She has not shown the photographs to anyone. She is still deciding what she is looking at.
The redshank that nested in the eastern beds arrived early this year. Migration timing is variable — this is known, documented, the field guides acknowledge the range. But two of the three pairs have stopped flushing when approached. They stand in the reed stalks and watch. They do not call. Redshank are not birds that stand and watch: their entire ecology is built around alarm calls and scatter responses, the whole marsh triangulating danger at once. These two pairs are quiet in a way that the marsh has not been taught to be quiet.
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