You open the new, free app on your iPhone:

a digital, audio library

of bird song and bird calls worldwide

courtesy of Cornell University –

algorithms, satellites, Tech Bros,

the Groves of Academe and philanthropy

in accidental constellation.

***

The mix of salt marsh and salt meadow stretches –

reedy and golden and green with sporadic

silver blue lagoons – nearly to Wales

across this expansive estuary.

‘Heron!’ you whisper, ‘Red Shank! Meadow Pipit!’

A beat. ‘Whimbrel! Little Egret! Brent Goose!’

A pause. ‘Skylark!’. And I can hear the bird –

above the gentle soughing of the wind –

distantly but actually, somewhere

unseen to the north-north west, its song

ascending in bright air.