Cliff End
29th December 2006, FridayThursday 28th December 2006
Cloud 100%; Wind SW3; drizzle. 30sp
I failed to meet my Targets on this sortie into the sunless, flat and weightless netherworld. In fact, only one of my Success Criteria was fulfilled: that of checking the progress of beach restoration at Fairlight Cove. I had, in addition, hoped to meet up with some of the scarcer winter beach birds – Rock Pipit & Black Redstart – and to explore the long shelves of low-tide sandstone in case a Previously Undiscovered population of Purple Sandpipers was scrabbling about there.
The ledges held only Oystercatchers, Curlews and just 2 Turnstones along with the usual mobs of gulls and lines of Cormorants. I’m not sure that the Rye/Pett Turnstones travel further west – I don’t usually see them from Hastings Country Park. I suspect that these are separate from the ones that scavenge Glyne Gap and the promenade lawns of St Leonards.
Rising and falling on the murky sea, were rafts of GG Grebes– about 40 in all – with 12 Red-throated Divers and small numbers of Guillemots, Common Scoters and Brent Geese flying west.
On the sandstone cliffs, the streaks of oozing rainwater are now decorated with white spatters of Fulmar droppings, where at least 20 pairs are now in residence. Some huge piles of rock have recently crashed down, but visitors seemed oblivious to the danger.
The renegade Feral Pigeons holed up in the undercut foundations of the old Haddocks Coastguards look down upon muddy lagoons cluttered with plastic bottles and enough driftwood to fuel beach cookouts till 2010. As shingle continues to fill the tidal pool behind the granite bund, domestic plants tumbled from the crumbling clifftop gardens mingle with Stone Samphire and emerging Yellow-horned Poppy to create a curious new habitat beneath the drunken sheds and hanging greenhouses.
