At Snettisham Beach, the dark mudflats riven with water channels stretch into the mists to the west. The myriad worms, crustacea and molluscs that live in the fine sands support over 400,000 wintering waterbirds including around 80,000 red knot; the estuary is also the roost site for around 30,000 wintering pink-footed geese that commute at dawn in wide skeins to the surrounding fields of spent sugar beet and cereals before dutifully returning the same evening.

The views are starkly beautiful but at the same time, unsettling because of the inaccessible vastness. Perhaps it is not surprising therefore that some want to tame it and turn the winter spectacle of twisting clouds of waders into a dull, impounded lake.

The most numerous here are the endless oystercatchers that forage at a respectable distance from each other at the water’s edge, then a handful of redshanks and curlews on the empty centre with small flocks of turnstones and pairs of ringed plovers near the high tide line. The shelving beach is only home to dogs and their walkers, well wrapped against the chill northerly that seems determined to keep Spring at bay for a few more weeks.