My first x-rated post

If you are of a nervous disposition, you may not want to scroll down to the picture.

The days of needing tv documentaries to bring about change on the volume of industrial discharges and raw sewage entering the Medway are long gone. In the late eighties horror shows such as 'The View from Horrid Hill' highlighted problems along the south shore. Now, the chemical plants are gone, (replaced in the main by housing), and water treatment works operate at a greater efficiency. The river is much healthier than it has been in a good while.

Of course, what we put down the street drains still gets in at places. Why you shouldn't really be tipping paint down the drains, as one of my ex-neighbours did a couple of years back, repainting the road outside my house in the process, thanks a lot. But what you also shouldn't do is cowboy plumbing. Around here, not attaching your property's outflow pipes correctly can lead to whatever you flush down your toilet coming straight out onto internationally important mudflats.

Today's find was very much a follow your nose. I was close to one of the main Redshank pre-roost assembly sites (and roost site, if undisturbed) when I realised something was up. I'd been trying to work out for about a week whether a local drop off in Redshank numbers in this creek was perhaps weather-related (at this particular spot numbers have dropped from the 150 mark to 25 if you were lucky) and now I had a new suspicion. Of course, no way of telling correlation from causation, but boy the creek stank.

Finding the correct number to report the incident on was slow; like all Government sites, gov.uk takes some navigating (I eventually gave up and found the number via the 'Surfers Against Sewage' website). However, things smoother from there. One call to the Environment Agency Pollution Hotline 0800 807060 later, and I had promises of immediate action and an incident number. I even got a phone call back within a couple of hours with an initial assessment; a home (or probably homes) wrongly plumbed in, EA to work with local water authority to trace back.

When reporting, I'd stressed discharging into a protected area, and EA reassured they would be taking this very seriously. Watch this space, as they say.

A second correlation/causation? Avocets had now moved right up this creek, and were loving this new input it seemed. I'd never had many at this spot in the three full years to date. Most likely they were just new arrivals settling in on the estuary (numbers have been increasing with feeding flocks now right up to the Strand) but there are some species that are irresistibly drawn to raw sewage (for the critters it attracts). Can I now rename Avocets 'sh*te-swipers'? Another reason to watch this space.