Taking the bait

Lower Halstow on the rise is usually good, but as I cycled to the end of Lapwing Drive I spotted something I hadn't seen there for many a year. A man, in waders, with bucket and a pitchfork. 

When the Parish Council set up the Brickfields community space, the arrangements included 'no bait digging'. Still clear as estuary mud on the entrance sign. There aren't many places left for baitdiggers along the southern shore. The Country Park doesn't allow it, the Wildfowlers don't at Funton. It shouldn't happen along the western side of Motney, but it does. Concentrated numbers are there Thursdays and Fridays before big weekend matches, most I've counted was 32 (sometimes the Sheppey lads come over when they feel their spot near the docks is exhausted). Otherwise, it is 'locals', and i find them very easy to get on with, being able to see their argument that they aren't causing that much disturbance (an essay in itself, another time- essentially the waders don't spook around them so much as the diggers don't stare them down).

But today was an ornithological opportunity. An area where no digging takes place has had a body out digging along it. I'd still count, but I was more interested in disturbance levels.

Clear from the start the flightiest wader had put off- just two Lapwing. The two Whimbrel were also missing from their shared haunts (the rocks along the shoreline and the causeway), the first time this winter I haven't turned them up. Had the chancer been concentrating along the shore? More crabbing than lugging? The local diggers have been telling me we're into the harder times now, but there's still a few if you know the signs (made me think of adult waders feeding better than juveniles- ask look in a visiting diggers' bucket and it'll have about a third of that of a local's). It is the time of year for lower numbers, and many of the remaining interstitial prey go in for self-preservation by keeping deeper in the mud during the colder times.

Crabbing would make sense. Old hands turn the rocks by hand, chancers usually don't like getting dirty, use the fork, and forget their bait-diggers' code of conduct and not put back. The Ringed Plover pre-roost assembly just past the causeway helped confirm- down by three-quarters to about a dozen. Hang on though, one or two look much 'darker' than last week's birds- there might have been some changeovers? Mind you, the Greenshank have gone too. One or two of these changes on their own might be circumstantial, this might be too many.

The wildfowl weren't much use, most staying a distance out regardless. Brent normally like to drop in to Twinney Creek for fresh water and ablutions. None. None on the fields, less than a hundred out around Gull Island. A few would sneak in by the end of my hour and a half there, but they seemed at sorts today.

Mind you, I don't know why I'd bothered. The embarrassed glances the digger gave me as I went past him had confirmed it for me. He'd read the sign.

Undercover pic of man.
In waders, in bucket.
Apparently.