St Patrick’s Day In the bright afternoon, a female hen harrier flies low over the ground and always into the sun to ambush the teal and snipe near the Marsh hide. She never manages a kill but comes very close; the snipe screech and take off and the teal flock splashes into the middle of…
Tag: Teal
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…
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…
Blackwater tides
On a bright day the high tide has flooded the saltmarshes, the wind is quiet and the waterbirds wait for the water to drop; a black-headed gull finds the tip of a rock and claims it, waits and then finally drops on to the exposed causeway to Northey Island. Turnstones arrive and work the seaweed-covered…
Blackwater dawn
The dawn appears slowly in the still air turning the horizon from deepest blue to dirty magenta, then split by a thin slice of electric orange. The black saltmarsh emerges olive green; the water in the narrow channels and open estuary is lit like smoked glass, catching every reflection. The sun rises and briefly turns…