Ah yes, a couple of days ago we took advantage of tide times and a reasonable wind direction to head back down to ‘home’ waters. The boat has been away for six weeks cruising around North Essex and the Suffolk rivers – time for a change.
Beautiful as those northern rivers are they all, apart from the Backwaters, lack something fundamental … saltings. A little they do have, but nothing as vast as those around the Lower Medway and around the Swale.
I was once told to “go north … to see bird life…” Boy, the Medway basin is by far the best place to see our feathered friends… Only the Mersea Quarters can out do anywhere for their numerous variety of gulls, but this morning I awoke to a cacophony of sound as a myriad of waders, gulls and geese set to in their morning chorus.
The evening before I’d watched a long line of avocet and russet fronted godwits feeding along the tide edge. Hundreds of geese sieved the mud flats below the line of barge remains on that side of the creek. Egrets strutted about, oblivious to all around and in amongst them oyster catchers and a few gulls fed too…
Grand. I hadn’t seen so many in one spot for weeks.
Birds along the shoreline…
This morning, whilst the mate cleared away our late breakfast things, I sailed gently into the saltings to find a succulent patch of glasswort (samphire) to go with the mate’s lunch: she loves the stuff. Nosing the dinghy into a patch of weed covered clay alongside a deep rill that has carved itself through what was once good sheep grazing land around 90 years ago, I stepped out into a world ht really belongs to no other than the birds… As I gently snipped enough stems with a pair of kitchen scissors to make a presentable bunch, my senses were attacked by the heady aromas that abounded, rich saline scents in the main…
Away over the saltings something had disturbed an oystercatcher, not to be out done, another rose, screaming. It wasn’t more than a trice and a huge flock of birds had begun gyrating around the sky … nothing obvious. A fox maybe? They live out here: food is in abundance! I slipped back into the dinghy and sailed quietly away, watched from its perch by a resting bird, completely nonplussed by my fairly close, but non threatening presence…
Ah, it was great…
Getting back aboard I watched the departure of a large yacht which had come into the anchorage late the previous evening. I think she was from Portugal: that country’s flag seemed to be on the spreader hoist … her ensign, a large red X on white had an emblem in the upper white…
I hope they enjoyed it too…
A Stangate departure…