Rye Harbour heatwave

19th April

The hot sun warms the sea air to a haze. The gulls, terns and avocets are a whirl of brilliant white under the clear blue sky and there is endless noise; it creates a confusing, bustling scene; birds are chasing and are chivied, others are building nests or displaying and mating in a frenzied flap. All infected by an incurable spring fever.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Avocets over the marshes

There are dozens of oystercatchers; many nesting quietly, others piping, and a single ringed plover bobs and calls from an empty shingle ridge. A small flock of whimbrels fly off and head northwards. A large mixed colony of sandwich terns and Mediterranean gulls is settled on the far side of the Ternery Pool and black-headed gulls fill the small, shingle islands. There are no swallows or sand martins over the water, just a single wheatear briefly on a distant fence post.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Whimbrel flock
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Camber castle and cattle

Inland and the reed-filled dykes and thorny corners ring with the calls of sedge and Cetti’s warblers; swathes of low bramble bushes are filled with dunnocks and lesser whitethroats. Peacock butterflies sunbathe on the bare ground and pairs spiral high up into the air. A single cuckoo calls briefly. Castle water, the flooded gravel pit near Camber castle, has a brilliant, black-necked grebe in breeding plumage. Cormorants slowly kill the willows with their guano and adults and young sit on their dead stick nests and pant hard in the afternoon heat.

Leave a Reply