Suspended six metres up from the ground, the Tower hide reinforces my faith in the oft-stated view that there are more wetlands in Britain today than at any time in the past hundred years. The wood-slatted, window-bright crow’s nest gives unparalleled views over a “forested” wilderness, though the untamed character of the land below owes little to trees.
A masterstroke for the millennium was to transform part of the redundant clay diggings from the world’s biggest brick factory into a nature reserve. The brick pits were flooded as pools and lakes, bare, open ground flushed with meadows.
The copses and spinneys will never quite look natural, for the people who put in the trees did so with agricultural minds, as if they were planting row upon row of potatoes. The reedbeds are a different matter. Our vantage point throws out vast expanses of prairie gone bush, the feathery-topped reeds taller than the tallest man, denser than the wildest wood. No human eyes can see inside, but the grasses cast out ventriloquial animal sounds – today the chirps and toots of coots and water rails.
I am on the wooden walkway, hand almost reaching for the hide doorknob, when a high, birdlike whickering comes from somewhere in the reeds close by to my left. All at once, there is an explosive thrashing of grasses and then two chasing deer burst out into full view. Lion-coloured coats, teddy bear faces; these are Chinese water deer, Hydropotes inermis. They stop abruptly, as if caught out engaging in childish play. I spot the male on the right, a comedy vampire, a fang drooling out of the side of his mouth. Both he and his partner swivel their heads to face us, then tip them right back, muzzles to the wind. Though I cannot detect the scent of my wife standing next to me, they can sniff us out no problem at 30 paces. But can they see us?
For an eternity of minutes, we stand still, while four button-black eyes stare in our direction. The deer break the impasse, ambling back into the reeds. I see a rump, two raised ears and then nothing but the swish of stems, this way and that, this way and that.
