Skewerwing
Most people who grow up round the Loxley or Rivelin reservoirs can tell you exactly which fence post, drainage marker or leaning rod stands where along the margin, because they've walked past it a thousand times without looking twice. Somewhere in that furniture, on a bad day, is a skewerwing. Grey and white, built narrow, holding a neck-and-leg line so straight it reads as municipal rather than animal. I have stood two feet from one convinced I was looking at a bent sign post, and only worked out my mistake when the sign post turned its head to watch me pass. It did not otherwise move. That is the point of it.
A skewerwing can hold one stance from murkrise clean through to highmurk, weight settled, eyes on the waterline, waiting for a ripple to say something a ripple shouldn't. When it comes, the whole front half of the bird drops in one motion, no windup, no warning hop, the neck uncoiling like something spring-loaded rather than muscled. The bill goes in at the angle a joiner uses for a nail, not the angle a beak usually uses for anything. Whatever's underneath rarely gets the chance to work out what happened, and what's left goes down that narrow throat whole; you can watch the shape of it travel the length of the neck for a good ten seconds after, which is not a thing I recommend watching on an empty stomach.
The trouble is that a skewerwing's targeting criteria are shape and ankle-height movement, not species, and it is not fussy about confirming its guess before committing. Locals along the Loxley blame more than one missing bathroom slipper on a skewerwing that struck at something pale drying on a washing line low enough to catch the breeze near the water. Wading in skewerwing water in anything pale, or standing still enough at the margin to register as part of the furniture, is asking the same question the slipper asked. You will not enjoy the answer more than the slipper did. Startling one mid-stalk is not much safer: it does not flee so much as relocate three feet along the bank and resume the same stance, now facing you, which most people find considerably worse than being ignored.
They work the Loxley and Rivelin waters mostly, wherever the bank gives them a straight sightline and a soft edge to strike into. The council put a sign up at the Rivelin ford two winters back warning walkers off the water's edge, and whichever skewerwing prompted it has never once needed to read it. Set a skewerwing against the other lurker-tier regulars and it's the odd one out for reasons that matter if you're planning your route: a curlbeak hunts by trace and sound and you'll rarely know it's decided you're worth the effort until the bill's already in; a scratcher doesn't hunt at all, just watches whatever you can't see yet and lets its own stillness do the warning. A skewerwing's patience is the plain, physical kind, muscle and balance rather than any of that, which is exactly why it ends up on a tapas board more often than either of the others. Its stillness is a trick that works on frogs and works on people right up until somebody who's heard this before starts counting the seconds instead of admiring the view.
Field note: don't wear anything pale below the knee near Loxley or Rivelin water, and don't stand still enough to look like part of the bank. If the fence post you're eyeing hasn't so much as flexed in a full sixty count, it's either a fence post or it's already decided you're not worth the movement. Either way, keep walking.
| Type | Lurker |
| HP | 7 |
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