Yesterday afternoon I ambled along the river wall for 20 minutes and was amazed to see that the brackish channels on the saltmarsh were frozen over. It was -6c when I arrived at 9am and I suspect that the lack of wind helped the ice crystals get going.
Unusually for low tide there were hundreds of duck dabbling along the edge. Mostly Teal but with many Wigeon bobbing around off shore along with a few 'plooping' Pintail. I suspect the frozen marsh has pushed them out to forage in the mud. There were quite a few Redshank, two Curlew and several Shelduck but no Dunlin.
Muddy platform between the Tudor and Victorian. Note the curious channels in the mud...
... which are made by the bellies of Teal as the shovel around looking for their dinner!
Tideline supermarket....
The sun had put on a great show all day but was overtaken at about 3pm by this vast dark cloud front the west.
18-1-13
Howard Vaughan, Information Officer