Purple Sandpipers

Drawing back the curtains this morning reveals a very thin layer of frost on the lawn. With rain forecast for later, I hurry over breakfast to give myself ample time for my promised visit to Sedger’s Bank and purple sandpipers. Low water exposes an extensive flat, rocky pavement at the western end of Port Eynon Bay, and I need to get to the furthest part of the bank to find them. On the way out, the sandy beach is always interesting. I pass several ring plovers, oystercatchers, sanderlings, a couple of grey plovers, grey herons, little egrets and many gulls, but it’s the turnstones I’m looking for, and that’s where the purple sandpipers will be.

It’s wild out here. The sound of curlews, oystercatchers and herring gulls mixes with the crashing waves, there are no human influences and I realize again how fortunate I am to live in this place. There’s solitude too, and as the rain-bearing clouds begin to move in from the west, I hope that the ever-changing weather will be kind. Offshore, shags dive through the surf, and cormorants slide under the surface, perhaps in search of the same fish. Wintering flocks of great-crested grebes are here throughout the winter, they never surface all together, but I count at least ten riding out the waves.

Turnstones are a little less confiding than purple sandpipers, and once a flock is put up, it’s easy to separate the two. In flight, purple sandpipers lack gaudy white wing patterns, and are easy to pick out, but against the rocks they’re easily overlooked. They usually hang out on the rocks at the very edge of the sea, and so getting to them needs effort. There are at least twenty, but likely to be more, and as usual some of them are very tame indeed.

Turning for home the first spots of rain splatter my face, and I catch the sight of a diver offshore. It’s too far out to identify precisely; great northern, red-throated, or black-throated, it doesn’t really matter, and knowing would make little difference to the enjoyment of my morning.