David

Plants growing above the high tide mark on beach shingle form a specialised and quite restricted community. Here at the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve these was quite a lot of sea kale, some of it in flower when we were visiting.

Another wader with a very young chick by one of the pools at the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. This time it’s an avocet. Somewhere along in the picture sequence, a black headed gull and a second avocet make brief appearances.

A few days ago, I posted a picture of a purple salsify flowering in a Canterbury garden. Here are the same flowers, growing wild on one of the grassy banks in the Rye harbour Nature Reserve.

The Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. An oystercatcher walking around one of the pools, probing the edge of the water for food. Its young chick was following behind, copying its example, as an avocet was doing much the same on the opposite shore.

Growing on the modern roadside wall around St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, rock samphire.

A lone avocet sieves one of the many pools on the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. These pictures were taken from the main access road running along the edge of the reserve, past the Visitor Centre, towards the end of the Rother estuary.