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…
Tag: Thames Estuary
A Tale of Two Estuaries
In early January, the Torridge estuary in North Devon is wild and windswept; repeatedly hit by a series of gales blowing in from the Atlantic. Only a handful of walkers brave the elements. The pretty fishing village of Appledore is sheltered from the worst of the weather and looks east to the sand dunes of Braunton…
Salt Fleet Flats Reserve
The compensation provided by the construction of a huge container handling facility on the northern edge of the Thames Estuary included a new inlet of inter-tidal mudflats just across the river on the edge of Cooling Marshes. Salt Fleet Flats Reserve as it is called was created by building a new sea wall inland of…
Mucking and Cooling
The mudflats at Mucking that run north from Coalhouse Fort support a great flock of avocet as well as smaller numbers of shelduck, curlew, knot, dunlin, redshank and grey plover. The birds are safe from disturbance as the mud is separated from the coastal path by a stodgy stretch of saltmarsh. A peregrine roosts on…