The Empty Beach

We walked the beach this morning for the third day in succession. There are plenty of other walks open to us but warm sunshine tempts us out onto the open sands, not least so our skins can absorb as much sunlight as possible after the short, grey days of this winter past.

We saw little in the way of wildlife: in this picture, if you care to hunt for them, you'll find two oystercatchers. In all, I counted nine of them along the beach....

....some, like the curlews, having already moved inland to breed. This oystercatcher is feeding in the field next to our house and we suspect will nest, as a pair did last year, in the adjacent graveyard. Their going leaves the few strung out along the beach to try to nest at the top of it, in the sand that isn't reached by the spring tides but, after this winter's high waters, there's precious little space there.

We saw several flights of eider heading north, flying very fast and low across the water, and we assume they're now off to their breeding grounds.

One way or another this leaves the beach very deserted. It's been a strange winter for its lack of corpses washed up: we've seen no rays, no skates, no sand eels, no dabs, no scorpion fish, no bottlenose dolphin - as we did last winter. The only stranding we found, despite a diligent search along the line of the rising tide, was a single mass of egg cases of the common whelk.