The storm has mostly moved over, but its trailing coat still ruffles the air outside Terminal 1 of Manchester airport, and the backlog of cancelled and delayed flights testifies to its handiwork. With an unexpected three hours to kill, I leave the terminal by way of a first-floor access road, as the dregs of the day drain from the oppressively blank sky.
I am braced for boredom, but an incongruous flicker of movement stops me in my tracks. The sheer brazenness of the small, energetic bird as it hops around on the asphalt is startling but, before I can contemplate it further, another bird bouncing along a railing distracts my eye. Another, then another, and, before I know it, my eyes are attempting to join 200 or more restless black and white dots, each one a point of elusive energy that seems to flee my gaze just before I can settle on it.
The flock of pied wagtails has gathered to roost in the trees of a memorial garden outside the Departures entrance. Jostling for position before settling down for the night, producing a cacophony of clipped calls, they flash, flit and twist through the dense evergreen foliage of a huge Portuguese laurel, and swarm over the terminal roof and the ledges of nearby buildings. Below, meanwhile, the repetitive choreography of cars, buses and luggage-dragging holidaymakers continues obliviously.
In the cold months, drawn by artificial light and radiant heat, communal roosts of pied wagtail often descend on airports, car parks, railway stations, industrial estates, petrol garages, even sewage works.
These bleakly utilitarian spaces underpin the Anthropocene, the era of human “dominance”, and the subversion of them by these birds seems both joyful and poignant. It suggests an adaptability that is still capable of surprising and inspiring, even while symbolising the idea of the end of nature as an independent province, subsumed into human history.
But, with the thunder of kerosene combustion nearby, this restless sky is perhaps a symptom of the change enveloping all things living underneath it, and our destinies seem closely intertwined.
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