Wobble boards, birds and buckets

9th August 2024

It feels like we should greet the grey graciously. For once, an August morning that’s balmy not burning. Considerate to skin, kind to eyes. Twenty one degrees, sun screened by a thick cotton wool cover of cloud.

The sea is full of happy bodies, bobbing around beyond the sandbank having braved the low tide ultra wobble board of sand to get there.

The bottom of the sea sand is steeply ridged, at first glance it appears as if sand castles have been built as a childish challenge with water poured over the top in mini waves that land and break and are off to the next one.

It’s a genuine challenge of concentration to walk over, up and down and up and down and ooh, deeper down suddenly followed by another ridge that takes you up to what feels like a flat part until you nearly or actually fall off the other side.

The thing is, it’s low tide. First low tide was at eight am on this beach. That’s us now, maybe adding ten minutes or so. If you fall on the sand wobble board there is water to catch you, nothing gets hurt except your pride.

The further out you get the deeper the water and the larger the waves pouring over the sand bank to greet you. This is low tide, remember, the largest wave coming towards you is knee height. That’s not to say that it hasn’t got power, but what’s the worst that’s going to happen? You get knocked off the wobble board by something the height of a toddler and land on your bottom with a splash.

I wobbled and landed on my bottom with a splash, got up, wobbled some more until I was over the sand bank and swimming in reasonably deep water with the others. In this tide, it’s still not proper sea. If you wish you can put your feet down, in many places, if you’re happy to get a wet chin, it’s shallow enough to kneel.

There’s something lovely about it. The water temperature is a comfortable eighteen degrees, visiting friends are there, everyone dips under the water away from the wind which gives a view of floating heads circling one another, laughing and smiling. occasionally there is an ‘ew’ as a hand lands on a jellyfish but it’s not as frequent as we might have feared.

The juvenile gulls are out. Spotty teenagers, they play over the flat sea in the wind. Cute and pretty kittiwakes are fishing too, from their famous nesting site on the retired rig. Unlike gulls, kittiwakes aren’t interested in bins and chips and only eat fish, shrimp and worms, particularly sand eels, that (thanks mainly to over fishing) have a challenged population in the UK.

A wise and salty friend of mine merrily informed me that ‘it’s illegal to catch sand eels now.’ Depends who you are. If you are a kittiwake or gull or puffin, it is not illegal. If you’re a commercial fishing operation, it’s now illegal to fish for sand eels in the North Sea in English and Scottish waters.

There’s a beautiful and very famous photograph of a puffin head and neck, its beak overflowing with plump and luscious-looking small silver fish. Those are sand eels. The small long, thin fatty-fleshed fish have been used in commercial salmon farming and for animal feed. Before the ban, they were getting thin in the water, endangering sea bird populations like kittiwakes and puffins, guillemots and shags, as well as North Sea marine mammals.

Today the Kittiwakes and gulls, like us, are happy .

In batches, we swimmers waddle back, braving the deep ridged sand balance board or lying on the water, mostly moving forward by hand in the manner of a surfer paddling out without a board. I cheat and hold Puck’s arm.

The wind on the beach is what’s commonly called ‘moderate’. It’s not desperately chilling because it’s coming from south south west (or directectly west in my personal opinion, supported only by the flag) but it’s enough to blow an unanchored plastic wet bag in the direction of the water. We catch it just in time.

We were changing when the fisherman loped into sight down to the shoreline with a large yellow bucket of ‘leftovers’. Don’t think about it too closely.

The kittiwakes came quietly but the gulls, common, herring and lesser black backed seemed to have heard the splodge from miles away. As he emptied the bucket, there was a bird pile-on, fighting over the fresh juicy contents, tearing them away before any bird had to share. Top tasty morsels that save them fishing for chick treats. The small birds are left to tidy up the scraps.

gulls and kittiwakes pile in

The swimmers disappeared in sequence with the contents of the bucket, leaving the beach to the incoming tide.

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