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…

The Walls

The Stour Estuary is a long straight body of water barely contained in the low hills of the Essex and Suffolk border; the land appears to be gently sinking into the sea. There is a scattering of moored yachts in the centre of the inner estuary; dinghies or perhaps canoes are crudely sheeted and bound…

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…