Surge Wars, episode #5: The haywire strikes back

During my decade back birding on the Medway, I've got to know just how much effect surges can have on the cover timings. Daily surges can often be minimal, adjusting my start times by matters of minutes, but sometimes the covering time has moved by up to forty, fifty minutes.

You learn to respect the surge. It can change the high water time as well. The surge can run faster than the tide, and when this happens, the difference in height is recorded in the records by the official name of 'residual'.

Today's forecast wouldn't actually create a residual, but it would help extend the time period of the top of the tide. The wildfowl and waders would have to ride out the highest waters for longer than normal. Just another fifteen, twenty minutes, but an energetic cost, especially for the waders if they found themselves having to aerial roost.

----

Tuesday.

Bench junction. The north-east corner of Eastcourt Meadows, at the north-west corner of Sharps Green Bay. Great views down Bartlett creek and out to the western basin. Normally I'd be out on Horrid Hill, but a 6.9 metre tide is one that will close the peninsula path. It will go under water. And I wanted to watch the general movements from both main bays of the Country Park- Sharps Green and Rainham.

The front came through over the high tide, and viewing conditions were lousy, but it was still possible to take in the spectacle.

----

Things might seem chaotic at first, so many birds adjusting, so many small flocks lifting and landing, lifting and landing, but there was a movement from the southern shore out to Nor and Friars. This is normal as the tide progresses, but today it was almost masked by individual hesitancies. Normally, movement in sizeable flocks. Today, handfuls at a time, both wildfowl and waders. Down, presumably, to the grim conditions during the passing of the front.

They got there in the end. Many of the wildfowl remained within the old breached walls of Nor. The northern seawall, somewhat higher, together with the submerged reefs of walls to the south, provide shelter, almost an atoll effect, much easier to ride the shallower waves.

The waders, finding the southern walls going under, with Friars saltings a little after, had to make for another roost. This proved to be their usual choice off Hoo island.

There are patterns in the chaos.

By the top of the tide, the path around Eastcourt Meadow was breached in three places, Sharps Green car park was semi-submerged and the causeway that forms Horrid Hill peninsula was under.

The new normal. The Environment Agency already has plans in place to raise the seawall the length of the Park. Sure, we'll see a lot of seawall scrub habitat lost in places, but vital to protect lives. Fun talking with the few public trying to make their way along the seawall. "Never seen it so high!" usual exclamation. cheekily sneak in a bit about climate change and rising waters and faces go blank, interest lost. We don't cope well with things going haywire. Just ignore it and it might go away. 

Don't look up. Them waders can just sky-roost.