Monday 18th November 2024 - Tagged and Crashing Waves

The turnstones, I mentioned in my blog dated 10th November, are back this time in greater numbers.  On Saturday, they were on the promenade, busily looking for food.  Still having some bread for the gulls, I broke a couple of pieces into crumbs, sprinkling these on the concrete.  Although some turnstones went towards the boat, Cara Marie, others stayed and took advantage of some easy food.  We mentioned our sighting to village bird watcher who suggested next time we saw them, to look at their legs because one has a red tag.  This tag is a replacement for an extremely worn ring which showed this bird was originally ringed in Canada in 2016.  We were surprised it had travelled so far and also to learn; turnstones can live for twenty years.

Since then, we haven’t seen the turnstones.  The reason being, it’s been coming up for high tide, when we’ve been out for our morning walk and not possible to walk along the promenade.  What a tide it’s been too, with waves crashing over the promenade.  This morning, the waves were particularly spectacular and looking down from the cliff tops at the beach huts, the sea was almost reaching them.  As it wasn’t quite high tide, we wondered if the waves would reach and possibly damage the huts but walking on the promenade later on, they don’t appear to have suffered any damage. If there’d been a strong wind, when the waves would have been higher and reached further, it would probably be a different story for the beach huts.  However, the barricades round the cliff slump on the promenade were in disarray, with a couple deposited, by the waves, near the beach huts.  The high seas have also taken away some of the slump but most of it still remains.

High seas, winds, rain and cold are all to be expected over the coming months but they do bring with them some impressive and at times breathtaking scenes.  A definite plus to living on the coast.  Today I have included photos of the waves and barricades on the promenade, plus Sunday’s sunrise.