Rye Harbour Birds
At Castle Water drake Smew. At Long Pit a Ferruginous Duck, 2 Scaup, a Long-tailed Duck, 2 drake Goldeneye among the many Pochard and Tufted Duck. Reported by Peter Whitcomb. The Shore Lark is still at the Beach Reserve.
Archive for January 4th, 2008
4th January 2008, Friday
4th January 2008, Friday
Pannel Valley NR
A full duck count this morning showed no increase in numbers after yesterday’s snow. Totals included 116 Wigeon, 154 Teal and 82 Shoveler.
A Water Rail was seen and the majority of the Moorhen were in the setaside fields rather than the marsh edge. Two Chiffchaff have been present for the past couple of days in the scrub and at least one Water Pipit was seen. Both a male and a female Marsh Harrier are also here daily.
4th January 2008, Friday
More on the strand line vegetation at Dungeness
On the 30 December I wrote a post about the unusual and internationally important vegetation communities that grow just above the high tide line (or strandline) at Dungeness and Rye. This photograph shows a particularly well developed example of this vegetation. It was taken in August 1998, and shows Babbington’s orache - the pale green patches of low growing vegetation, amongst dark clumps of sea weed washed up by the sea. Sea kale, a relative of the cabbage replaces the annual vegetation slightly further inland. This is the best patch of this vegetation I have ever seen at Dungeness. What happened next?
