Kitesurf party at Camber Sands

Walking back along the beach on Saturday we saw an amazing sight: over 60 people out kitesurfing:
It must have been a perfect day for them, just look at the sand being driven by the wind:
Here's a few more pics:
Mike

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On the beach

No, not the excellent (but depressing) novel by Nevil Shute, just us walking on Camber Sands. As Saturday is our "day of rest", we weren't working in the wood, and thought a walk on the beach might be nice. I got some cool photos of gulls breaking shellfish open to eat, so it was well worth it! It wasn't quite sunny, but that made for a nice view:
The shingle bank has been seriously eroded by the storms a few weeks ago:
It's not just a problem for those who live on top of them - there's a drop on the other side down to Camber!

The sign warning people using kite buggies and boards where their limit is had also taken a battering:
but I think they all know what to do anyway. The wind was in the wrong direction for kite surfing today, but there were a few hardy souls with boards or buggies out braving the chilly wind on the beach.
Anyway, on to the pictures of Herring Gulls breaking shellfish open. These pictures aren't as good as I'd have liked, but there wasn't a lot of light, and my telephoto lens cost under £200, rather than £2,000... but hopefully they're still good enough to show what was going on. I took pictures of several birds doing this, and I'll mix them together below.

First, find a shellfish and take off with it:
Then get at least 20m up in the air:
Next, stall your flight, so that the shellfish drops vertically, and you don't lose it bouncing along the beach:
Then let go...
Follow it down to the ground:
Quickly, someone else might get to it first!
and then eat it:
Some of them took several drops to break, probably because it was onto har sand rather than stone, but each gull persevered until it got its reward.

Right, woodland update coming up next...

Mike

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The beach and the wood

I had my friend Jon visiting over this weekend. We went up to the wood, of course, but also cycled to Dungeness to enjoy the scenery and a pint at The Britannia. There was also time for a bit of kite flying down on the beach near our house:
Up in the woods there were lots of butterflies around (sorry, no pictures), including the Brimstone patrolling the cant we cut a year ago. The Wood Anemone are now flowering in large numbers, the bluebells won't be far behind...
Other than just sitting around cooking lunch, making coffee and shooting at a tin can with the air rifle, we did actually have a little job to do. Tracy and one of our neighbours want to build a raised bed for growing veg in our communal garden, so we measured up some logs and made some stakes to bring back. As it was just me and Jon, rather than a big group, I took some spare protective gear and Jon did some of the work.
We ended up with 12 logs and 8 stakes - the idea is to stack the logs between the stakes to make walls, perhaps using an existing fence on two sides, though I'm concerned it will rot the wood, so we might do log walls on all four sides.

I heard a pheasant rustling through the leaves, and is usual it pretended it hadn't seen me, leaving me time to change the lens on the camera and follow it for a while.Anyway, that's all for now, though I might post some sunset pictures from the beach later if I have time...

Mike

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