Three glorious hours cut off by the tide

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/22/three-glorious-hours-cut-off-tide-country-diary

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The rising tide fetched with it slews of blue sky. As I walked the causeway jumble of rocks, the sea slopped gently below. I was about to be cut off for three glorious hours on Foulney Island.

Saltmarsh metamorphosed into momentary lagoons. Dozens of curlew settled, probed, then lifted at the water’s ingress. Due west could be seen Piel Island, its castle all turrets and crumbling towers like an old battleship, halfway to the flattened sliver of Walney Island. Beyond that, windfarms.

Named “Fowle Island” on old maps, this shingle spit protrudes two miles into Morecambe Bay, providing a route out to mussel beds exposed at low tide. A single gannet glimmered distantly, travelling north. Ringed plovers ran over shingle, paused, spun away. A pair of sandwich terns – elegant interlopers – dipped along the shoreline, that rising scratch of sound the first notes of incipient summer. A flight of Brent geese riffled over the bay, then looped back towards the island’s furthest point, their quietly rasping chorus inflected by occasional notes of surprise.

Eiders rafted on the water. About 3,500 pairs overwinter in Morecambe Bay, the southern edge of their range. Most will soon head north, to spend the summer in Scottish waters, leaving a small successful breeding population; last year, 53 pairs fledged more than 200 young on Foulney, and there are breeders on Walney and Chapel Islands too.

Seen through the telescope, the drakes’ plumage is stylish: black crown, golden bill and a soft green patch on the back of the neck. There’s something gloriously gossipy about their courting call, ooOo, ooOo, as they throw back their heads, but something debonair too, in their pied haughtiness. There is a visible preponderance of drakes, an imbalance on Foulney that is not yet fully understood.

Eiders swallow mussel shells whole, crushing them in the gizzard, and the shingle was littered with blue and white aggregates of expelled mush. The mussel beds are currently open for dredging, but there are restrictions in place, and eider are faring well locally. As I approached, a group waddled off into the tide, reluctantly, it seemed, as if leaving the sun-warmed shingle was really all too much.

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