Cobalt gems luminous in the bright light

Sandy, Bedfordshire Two kingfishers, with daggers of beaks and undercarriages of deep orange, were engaged in a chase

In the days before we gave names to storms, an anonymous blow laid low a riverside tree. Years later, leafless and lifeless, its branches bare of bark, the tree still lay across the water, an antlered jetty.

That gale had heaved the tree over, root plate and all, taking a giant's bite out of the riverbank. The tree's sheared and weathered anchors stuck out like pirates' bones from the caked soil at the base of the trunk. A long-ago flood had wrapped a silt-stained shred of black plastic around one of the protruding roots.