Swale National Nature Reserve – Notes from Wild Places

Peregrine hunting dunlin at Shellness

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…

Plovers and catchers

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…

Shellness

The tide is running in fast and the crowd of oystercatchers in the bay walks up the beach like an invading army in black and white tunics. Then the bulk of the birds flies to the shelving bank of cockle and osyter shells on the spit to sit out the high tide like a well-drilled…