Last night’s storm was intense but had cleared away leaving us in the cold sector – sunshine and showers in a keen breeze. As luck would have it the rain was torrential when we left but, miraculously, it cleared up the moment we arrived at Dell Quay.
The rain had aggravated the flooding so the lane to the farm had deeper water than ever before and the fields looked distinctly sad. The upside was a magnificent rainbow that appeared to the southwest; although the picture only shows part of it it was a full arch and much brighter earlier, while I was trying to make my phone camera work.
Initially it seemed that it was going to be quiet with only a few pigeons feeding in the field or flying around but that changed when we got closer to the harbour. It was just before a neap low tide so there was plenty of mud but still with a fairly full channel.
The first of the social gatherings was the sight of 10 Grebes in the field close to the farm buildings, I’d not seen so many that close together before, often seen in ones or twos but not this many. They appeared to be feeding but for some reason were doing it together. According to Samuel Fanous (from his compendium of
collective nouns for birds) this is a water dance of grebes, a rather attractive name.
Off Salterns Copse there were about 12 Shelduck; indeed a Dopping of Shelduck. Their heads swung right and left as they scanned the mud for something appealing, clearly enjoying some company.
Next there was a Parcel of Oystercatchers, at least 30 on the mud just north of the Copperas mark; there were more in the fields too.
A few hundred yards further on were a curfew of Curlew, 20 of them just sitting together on a mudbank like redshanks.
In the background flying in a long line along the channel southwards were a fling of Dunlin and on the field to the right was a gaggle of (Brent) geese. There were about 100 of them, all feeding together so a gaggle didn’t seem to be appropriate as it felt like a name for a smaller number.
If that wasn’t enough a small mumeration of starlings shot out of the trees to do a few acrobatics, of which they are masters. Why so many different species chose to get together at the same time is interesting, the time of year is important but maybe the weather had a part to play too.