The Breach

We set off early to catch the Spring high tide. The morning air is cold. Cobwebs are everywhere, dripping with dew drops sparkling in the rising sun. We reach the Breach, which was deliberately created about 10 years ago, to cut a channel from the river Parrot into the Steart marshland.

At high spring tides, the sea spills over into neighbouring fields, reducing flooding further inland and also creating a new and unique saltmarsh landscape for wildlife to flourish. We watch, mesmerised as the grassland fills with water. Birds eagerly gather in the waters, bobbing and diving and feeding in this fresh influx.

Great flocks of delicate Avocet pirouette like ballerinas in the waters, then rise as one and move like slim darts in the sky as the dark shadow of a Marsh Harrier threatens. Once the danger has gone, they fly back together and settle once more on the rapidly deepening waters. Oystercatchers, Shellduck, Snipe and Curlew all gather to feed. Cows, splash clumsily as their fields turn to marshes, turning to stare at us with a mixture of threat and uncertainty.

The breach and salt marshes have had their fill now. The relentless rhythm of the tide now starts to recede again. What it has given remains and the waters now retreat from the river, back to the sea, as a new cycle begins.

published by Julie