At high tide at Shellness, which usually falls in the middle few hours of the day, a peregrine often runs in to try to take a dunlin or ringed plover. The start is marked by the sudden rush away of the dunlin flock. The oystercatchers gathered on the ness and curlews in the saltmarsh all…
Tag: Peregrine falcon
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…
Spoonbills and sandwiches
August 30th At Shellness, the flocks of waders and waterfowl are enjoying the easy pace of the balmy summer. Swallows move along the beach in small flocks; a wheatear forages on the shingle. There is a late summer silence at high tide mainly because the Brent geese have not arrived. Sandwich terns are roosting…
March light
In March, the grass is growing, gardens and greens are full of daffodils, the budding trees are russet-fringed and willows are in bright leaf. The muted, early spring palette, laced with white and pink cherry blossom, is filled with promise. The old estate at Little Barford near St Neots provides a set of postcards of…
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….
A Gloomy Place
Gills Lap on Ashdown Forest is beaten with rain and low cloud hugs the hills; the ground is black, waterlogged and cold. There is no wintering great grey shrike sitting high on a lookout, just a handful of fieldfares laughing in its place then drifting across the heath. A passing peregrine sends the chaffinches into a…