Winter’s coming.
What a morning!
When seen from here on Silverdale beach the mudflats are pale and skeletal. If I let my eyes get lost in them I forget they are anything other than the sky they are coloured in by. The land feels like it’s ‘waiting’. For what I have no idea, but there’s certainly a sense of uneasy anticipation out there under the blustering clouds, beyond the straggle of shoreline flora.
As I arrived in the van a lone Oystercatcher bobbed out of the way but stayed uncommonly close to me. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so near, apart from the occasional fence post perch flyby. I could see how it’s back was feathered with an ocean of dark grey rather than my perceived black. Perhaps this is a winter setting.
His beak was paler than memory told me, the lower half blacked by mud from a previous foraging session. I got the sense that it was not a well wader, perhaps his days were numbered, his soul contract soon to expire. Poor thing.
Out on the mudflats a lone immature gull squatted low, head to the incoming wind, feathers sleeked back. Maybe a Herring Gull, but I’m not too sure as I don’t have my binoculars with me. A new oversight and one that I must not allow to happen again.
Low tide is almost two hours away, but despite this the whole area is glistening wet. Even the channel in front of me is impassably full of dishwater coloured sea. I wonder if this is due to the strength of the prevailing wind?
From the look of the strandline last night’s high tide reached much farther up the shore than the story told by the tide tables suggests. Again this could be wind borne. I shall have to watch this and learn more of the moods of this place.
The distant headland of Humphrey Head is a shroud of cloud, merging softly into the greys of the bay, hunkering down alongside the checkerboard cheekiness of Grange over Sands.
A band of rain that currently squalls on the far horizon of the Bay is heading inland. It will reach me soon.
