Hide and seek with birds of a feather...

Six miles north of Carnforth within easy seagull reach of Morecambe Bay. On 200 acres of reed bed, woodland, salt marsh and inland lagoon, the Leighton Moss Nature Reserve offers visitors the chance to see more than 80 species of bird — some of them lucky enough to be born in England and the rest sensible enough to spend their holidays here.

If you believe that birdwatching is an uneventful activity, you are wrong. Last week, enthusiasts in one of the 'hides' at Leighton Moss watched a marsh harrier swoop like a dive bomber on a colony of black-headed gulls and soar back into the sky with a chick in its talons.

None of the birdwatchers turned a hair. The harrier's offspring needed to be fed. They take nature as they find it at Leighton Moss.

The marsh harrier returned to the family nest halfway up Warton Crag, another nature reserve, just down the road and managed by Lancashire County Council.

The birdwatchers in the hide refocused their binoculars in anticipation of the next exotic sighting.

Alan Holland, who earns his living loading tankers for a chemical company, defended the aerial predator. 'The most dangerous species in the world is man,' he said. 'They kill for pleasure and kill for profit. Birds kill only for food.'

And off he went, his special birdwatching telescope swung across his shoulder, to continue his nationwide search for an osprey, adding: 'I just missed one at Marbury Court Park and I missed another at Conway.'

Alongside the pool used to give school parties elementary instruction in the way in which seabirds live, Neil Norvock, birdwatching telescope across his knee, was enjoying a moment of peaceful rest.

However, at the sight of Jim Beattie — retired office administration now a volunteer Leighton Moss — Neil, a traffic manager with North Lincoln Council, announced, in tones of uninhibited triumph, that he had just witnessed a 'feeding party of treecreepers' ascend a nearby horse chestnut.

'I have,' he said, glowing with pleasure, 'never been so close to treecreepers in my life.'

Neil's wife Yvonne, a nursery school headteacher with a birdwatching telescope of her own, is dedicated to convincing children 'that you can get a Wow! from nature'.

Yvonne is right. It is impossible to sit in any one of the hides at Leighton Moss and look out through its long, low windows without marvelling at the sights the nature reserve has to offer. It needed the imagination and dedication of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to make the marvel available to anyone with the ingenuity to find the nature reserve.

The inlet from the sea at Morecambe Bay had begun to dry out and the seabirds had started to look for new breeding grounds.

The RSPB rescued the marshland and the lagoon, but the regeneration was a slow process. Bearded tits returned in 1973, marsh harriers in 1987, bitterns just after the turn of the century.

They joined the numerous types of goose, innumerable sorts of duck and occasional swans who had never been away.

Birds come first at Leighton Moss. But it is also a celebration of all the wildlife that is England. Jim Beattie spoke proudly of the red deer in the reserve and, after a sweep with his binoculars, located one in the long grass.

ON THE wall of one wooded hide a notice urges visitors to take an interest in the resident There are, apparently, five species — Brown Hawker, Common Darter, Southern Hawker, Golden Ring and Four Spots.

Shame on you who thought they were just another buzzing insect to be flicked away from the face and kept out of the picnic jam. They are part of England's nature.

Do not believe that Leighton Moss is designed for anoraks whose lives are devoted to the manic pursuit of rare species. It attracts experts on our flora and fauna.

Jim Beattie remarked casually, as we made our way from one hide to another, that he could hear a blackbird, a wren and a goldcrest singing together. But, true to the spirit of the nature reserve, he is the most approachable of experts.

Leighton is a place to be enjoyed. Only people deaf to the music of the countryside could fail to be fascinated by all that's on offer.

There are roosting boxes for bats alongside nesting boxes for birds. Beattie pointed out that there are as many types of bat as dragonfly. And they can all be found at Leighton Moss.

Tom Bridge, a young man sitting in one of the hides, summed up Leighton Moss in a simple phrase. He had come to the nature reserve to put his busy job behind him and 'find peace in the natural world'.

The black-headed gulls, rising above their nests as a protective blanket against marauding carnivores, may not find it so tranquil. But for homo sapiens, it is the perfect place to relax.

So why does a certain sort of birdwatcher call the hobby 'twitching'? Nobody twitches at Leighton Moss.