The weather at Elmley on the North Kent Marshes is grey and uninviting; we miss a short-eared owl and peregrine in the gloom, but an obliging female kestrel and passing male marsh harrier make the day.
Tag: North Kent Marshes
Kent Churches
These baker’s dozen were taken when heading to and from, or sometimes within, wildlife sites. The North Kent Marshes and Dickens country around Higham feature heavily as do Oare and Romney Marshes. A couple from the heart of the Weald and downland villages provide some contrast. All are a timeless and beautiful part of the…
Hunting raptors
A female marsh harrier patiently works a patch of long grass within the grazing marshes at Cooling; it floats lazily low over the ground and seeks its small mammal or bird prey on which it will suddenly twist and pounce. A nearby flock of starlings seems unconcerned and moves restlessly across the short-grazed grassland ever…
Cooling Marshes
In winter, the grazing marshes below Cooling have a wild beauty especially under a late afternoon sun that splices the broken clouds. This autumn, a large flock of some 600 lapwings sit out the day on the fields but are constantly restless and at low tide shift to the narrow strip of firm ground created…
The unstoppable sea
On Saturday, the day is warm with a southerly breeze and the oystercatchers gather on their familiar stretch of shoreline at the far end of the ness of shells that gives the place its name. Another spit near the blockhouse is filled with a tight knit flock of grey plover, dunlin and knot. On the…
Oare today …
The weather is broad grey brushstrokes with brief sparks of sunshine that light small flocks of lapwings and the many ducks on the open waters of the East Flood. A mobile mass of starlings forages in the recently cut marsh with a busy intensity; birds rise from the back and move to the front in…
The Thames Estuary at Cliffe
The now familiar walk across the flat grazing marshes from Higham Church passes a herd of ewes with a busy ram that pursues his next conquest with single-minded determination. A flock of goldfinches sit in the boundary hawthorns and small charms fly into the acres of seeded thistles in the adjacent field. In the distance,…
Feeding on the falling tide
On the Medway at Otterham Creek, a handful of the black- headed gulls are beginning to get their dark chocolate brown heads while the majority remain fixed in winter plumage. The gulls sit in roosts and some paddle across the bare mud; they never seem to have to work too hard for their food. The…
North Kent Marshes
The low sea wall runs through the middle of the Swale National Nature Reserve and maintains the freshwater grazing marsh on the landward side. Seaward, is a wide expanse of flat and featureless salt marsh, beyond which a huge sandbank rises from the Swale estuary decked with an odd assortment of geese, crows and gulls….
Medway mud
The view from the old quay on Otterham Creek looks north toward the Hoo Peninsula and the heavy industry that edges the east end. The creek empties at low tide leaving a single spine of water between wide mudflats deeply incised by snaking tributaries; teal fly in to forage at the water’s edge and redshank…
Upnor and the River Medway
The narrow high street at Upnor drops down the hill to the edge of the Medway; the street today is a smart rendition of Dickensian England with weatherboard houses and fine pubs. Chatham, just upstream across the river, was the Royal Navy’s principal dockyard and the little town, that was built around the old, riverside…
Oare Creek
The November sunshine is uncomfortably warm. The air is clear, the light bright and wind dead. The boats that line the narrow creek are a picture, most wrapped up for the winter. Redshanks and egrets forage on the mudflats; house sparrows in the pathside hips and haws along with blackbirds and reed buntings. On the…