The climate is out of goose. The outlook was rain on a light northerly and we've dressed accordingly.
However the forecast is fallacious – it's heat, too heat for our layers, and there may be barely a cloud within the sky.
It's the first weekend of October and we're on the south-east nook of the Isle Of Sheppey, arguably the wildest place in Kent, if not the whole south east.
The gated hamlet of Shellness is right here, subsequent to the naturist seashore. The favored coastal city of Whitstable is throughout the Swale estuary, the North Sea is out to the east.
Weathered wood groynes stand proud of the sand like penitents queuing to wash within the Ganges.
On the horizon we will see Maunsell Forts – World Warfare II defences that call to mind the alien craft of HG Wells’s Warfare Of The Worlds.
Oystercatchers pipe and curlews ‘cur-lew’. The primary of the brent geese have arrived from the Arctic north – good, tidy, small and black. There are a dozen right here now. Inside two months there can be not far off a thousand.
Our hope had been to see the primary of the raptor superstars that come down from Scotland to see out the colder months.
Hen harriers, the males ghostly and delightful platinum – persecuted half to extinction by game-keepers fearful for his or her grouse.
Or merlins, our smallest falcons, that sit hunched on posts scanning for a pipit or a finch.
Or short-eared owls that hunt within the daytime on essentially the most buoyant wings.
We see none of those. However we do see one thing that even 5 years in the past would have been unimaginable.
And it’s a bittersweet expertise as a result of it’s troublesome to disassociate from the profound results of synthetic local weather change.
Egrets are a part of the heron household. The gray heron can be acquainted to many, seen stock-still as much as its shins in city ponds or lakes, spear-head invoice able to plunge right into a fish, yellow eye fierce.
Much less frequent is the little egret, then the nice white egret after which the cattle egret. All are fresh-out-of-the-washing-machine white. All have the identical dagger payments. Apart from their measurement, the primary distinction is the size of their neck.
In accordance with the Kent Chook Report, printed by the Kent Ornithological Society, there had been no little egrets recorded within the county till 1957. Now they breed right here and 104 have been seen on someday alone in 2020.
It’s an identical story for excellent white and cattle egret, if not on wherever close to the identical scale. Neither are talked about within the first KBR of 1952, whereas in the newest – 2020 – the very best counts are of 12 for the previous and 13 for the latter. Communicate to older birders and they'll discuss of creating particular journeys to see – or ‘twitch’ – both.
The explanation for his or her advance west and northward from Africa and southern Europe is, depressingly, predictably, that it's now hotter right here.
We see six this October morning on Sheppey – 4 adults, two, with darkish payments, juveniles. The possibilities excessive, subsequently, that they've bred right here.
They stand by the creek edge, hunched like previous males in overcoats till they stalk off, cautious but purposeful, lifting their toes excessive.
We stand awhile and watch them, these colonisers from the south, earlier than we stroll on ourselves, too heat below this October sky.
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