This is my equivalent to "On first looking into Chapman's Homer.."; that dizzying moment for Keats when he became aware of the, for him, hitherto hidden glories of classical Greek poetry.

That line now stands and probably has for decades as a synonym for epiphany. That door opening instance; there's no longer any before, it's only after now.

Well, it happened to me this afternoon at the London Wetland Bird centre. An epiphany with birds? They can happen anywhere. Sudden realisations of otherness, or a striking new awareness for wont of another term, are n't aesthetically reserved. Mine was this afternoon. The merest glimpse, almost a sliver of a glance of one of Britain's rarest birds - the mysterious, fugitive, Bittern. So are it's become a stalwart unfortunately of the Red List of threatened species. Blink and it could be gone

And I did, and so did it. Gone with not even a puff of smoke to say where it had been. Not a trace apart from a few trembling reeds.