South Walney at high tide

Piel Castle and the old pier almost submerged

An incoming tide floods  a last shoal, dislodging   roosting oystercatcher. They rise in a pattern of black and white and alight on a shoreline that darkens with countless  birds.  Widgeon swim by and out on the spit there are cormorant and male eider. 
We hear redshank, geese  and the occasional curlew.  There's a flock of lapwing, waders fly overhead and it's all so evocative. 
Afterwards, the images of the day bring surprises. We saw a sole male eider, my camera found forty.   And it caught the fast-flowing tide when we were close-focused on grey seals.

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The grey seal cows give birth during October- November and we head for Groyne Hide which looks out onto the seaward side of the spit. The tide comes racing in, waves breaking on the shore line where the grey seals lie hauled up   Waves lap at a pale seal pup and it hauls itself clear as the spit narrows.   A white and fluffy seal pup, born  somewhat early, lies beside its mother. Powerful swimmers as they are, a couple of adult seals are buffeted by  the force of the incoming tide.  A blue buoy is tossed about in the turbulent water.  The day is cloudy, the light poor.  The spit is some distance from the observation hide and it’s hard to make out what we’re seeing.  What looks like a boulder on the water’s edge raises a flipper.   There are gulls amongst the seals and dark birds that include cormorant or shag, both species are present.   When editing  images  of the day  I realise there are male eider amongst the cormorant.  And lesser black-backed gulls amongst the seals. The adult seals look torpid but a video picks up interactions of the grey seal colony and the birds as high-tide approaches. . 

Eider and cormorant beside the grey seal colony

South Walney catches the full force of the wind straight off the Irish Sea and we return the way we came, hoping to find waders pushed close to the shore by the incoming tide. The old pier was almost submerged at high tide.
The salt marsh had vanished,  flooded by the tide, no roosting ground visible.  Grey seals swam close to shore in  deeper water and popped up to peer at us, a mutual curiosity.  Roman noses and wide- apart nostrils distinguish  grey seals from common seals. 
High tide creates a fresh tide-mark, a feeding ground for waders as the tide ebbs leaving seaweed and nutrients.   A flock fed along the water's edge, amongst pebbles and seaweed, the birds moving along the strand- line.  The day was cloudy, the light poor and the birds intent on feeding, their heads down.   They're turnstone, the name indicating  their habit of foraging in seaweed and shingle on the shoreline.   White bellies and orange legs show bright  with 'distinctive pale breast side-patches' ( Collins Bird Guide.) These show clearly against a dark bib.  

We timed our visit to coincide with high-tide and we tried to interpret how birds would respond, in the hour before high-tide and the hour after.  Field-craft is about interpreting the experience, not solely identifying birds.   'Outside of the breeding season, eider can be seen offshore,' says the CWT leaflet.   My best image shows a male with distinctive black and white plumage and a soft pistachio green on the nape, so when do eider begin to assume breeding plumage?  In winter,  widgeon numbers will  be significant as the birds fly south from their Northern breeding grounds in Scandinavia , Iceland and Russia. So when is peak time to see large numbers of waterfowl?  South Walney is a great location to find migratory species  although with light levels so poor and a gusty wind we were unlikely to find the goldcrest that had been reported. 
There were a few straggly yellow-horned poppies on the shingle.  A viola and viper's bugloss on sandy ground.