Shellness is a remote and remarkable spit of cockle shells at the east end of the Isle of Sheppey. It is the tip of a vast expanse of saltmarshes and dark brown mud that form a large part of the Swale National Nature Reserve. The shell spit is continually moulded by the tide and currently being eroded on the seaward side creating a steadily increasing bay. In winter, this is a huge high wide wader roost as well as a remarkable place to watch the saltmarshes flood on the biggest spring tides. In summer, it is noted for holding breeding little terns and ringed plovers, although the terns struggle to maintain a foothold.
The walk to the ness from the small car park by the Shellness Estate is either down a path by the saltmarsh edge where the sea lavender Limonium vulgare and golden samphire Inula crithmoides are in flower or in front of the houses just below the high tide mark. The latter route passes a rich coastal flora including sea holly Eryngium maritimum, sea kale Crambe maritima, sea beet Beta vulgaris, yellow horned-poppy Glaucium flavum and a pretty Euphorbia. species. There are a bewildering array of insects here, but a beewolf Philanthus triangulum is distinctive as its takes nectar or pollen on a sea holly flower; this is a predator of honey bees as these provide the food source for their larvae; it is a species of digger wasp that is expanding its range in southern England as a result of climate change.
On the beach, ringed plovers breed in small numbers above the tide mark and pairs still have nests or young as a pair starts to ‘pipe’ on approach and stay close trying to distract what to them is a potential predator. So it is a careful and quick walk through this and another territory before breeding oystercatchers start to shout and circle; they too have young hidden somewhere.
On the foreshore there is the usual gathering of non-breeding oystercatchers that move into a increasingly tight flock with the rising tide; also a handful of dunlins, turnstones, grey plovers, in fact all the usual suspects. Sandwich terns sit with the black-headed gulls and overhead a flock of a dozen whimbrels move south giving their far carrying pi-pi-pi call.; they are the first sounds of the approaching autumn.
