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: Shelduck
Rye Harbour Nature Reserve
The first day of February is bright sunshine and the Nature Reserve and its visitor centre draws a crowd after a permanently miserable January. The rapid flow of incoming seawater in one of the main channels from the Rother attracts a patient little egret surrounded by a handful of less patient herring gulls that are…
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,…