There’s a brief period of fine weather as a high pressure ridge sneaks in between two fronts bringing blue

skies and light winds, but that’s not all that’s blue in an around Prinstead.

First of all on the sea wall, near the Nutbourne outfall I saw a small bird sitting on a ledge that looked a bit different. Staying as still as a statue I watched and although the bird was in silhouette it’s pointed beak and compact body became clear, could it be a Kingfisher? This was soon confirmed when it flew down into the  stream to catch a small, silver fish and returned to it’s perch in a flash of blue. Amazingly it stayed there for a while until Bonnie went down to the waters edge for a dip when it eventually, and rather reluctantly,  flew off.

It’s not often that you can  see Kingfishers so close and for so long, this one was only 15-20 feet away and it stayed for minutes rather than seconds

A high tide and a light south westerly offered ideal sailing conditions although it’s far too shallow near the sea wall for most craft. Today a lone board sailor was out screaming across the wide expanse of sea on a broad reach before gybing in front of us. The brightly coloured, blue and red sail stood out in the early morning sunshine; another unusual sight in this

part of the harbour.

Near Prinstead the sad sight of a blue motor boat that had broken away from its mooring and had been driven onto the rocks came into sight. It was stable enough tied up to the sea wall, just above the high tide line but needed to be pulled off over the next couple of days before the spring tides battered it against the rocks and caused further damage. It had clearly been neglected and in need of some TLC, such a shame the mooring lines had not been checked.