A Bit of a Swell. Another Black-winged Stilt and Free Fertilizer.

The gales yesterday caused there to be a big swell on the evening tide and the large amount of rainfall during the day had made the river so full the water level in it never receded. This meant that the tide had nowhere to go and so the sea rose right up to, and in places over the sea wall. The destruction it had caused overnight was very evident on the beach at Axmouth this morning.

In  the top photo there is a door and right down on the tide-line a wheelie bin!

The second picture shows one of many mattresses/cushions with lots of other debris. 

There were buckets and spades, chairs, bits of windbreaks, rugs, kitchen utensils etc...

They had come from right down the other end of the beach at Seaton....

 The beach huts had been lifted and jumbled up. Some had been washed right away hence the debris at Axmouth.

These were once in a neat row..

 Looking from the other way shows the mayhem more clearly

Some of the huts on West Walk which are up on the promenade above the sea wall were totally demolished too. Smashing ( pardon the pun) start to the holiday season then!

See some photos of the accompanying foam last night, here on Steve's Blog.

Late morning me and Bun popped over to the Exe hoping to see the three Black-winged Stilts that arrived there yesterday. We saw the single one at Bowling Green Marsh, which was showing really well, if a little distant. Having said that though it was nearer than the one we saw at Radipole two weeks ago. We also went to Powderham Marsh where the other two had been seen earlier in the day but they weren't there any more. While there we were missing out on another small passage of Poms back on patch but to be honest I was still suffering from the after effects of yesterday's seawatching, so hadn't really relished the though of any more. I'm STILL feeling really tired now! It makes my eyes tired and plays havoc with the arthritis in my neck. I think a straight rather than angled scope would be a better bet for prolonged viewing. Shame I don't have one.When Steve found out where we were he couldn't believe we'd wanted to see another Black-winged Stilt because we'd only seen one two weeks ago!  Well, if we'd stayed in Seaton seawatching we'd have seen another Pom or two and we'd only seen some yesterday. So what's the difference? 

Anyway I was hoping to get a better photo of  a Black-winged Stilt and although the one we saw wasn't all that close I did better than at Radipole. At least this one came out in the open for us.

Heavily cropped photo showing how when standing on one leg, the rested leg is held right up along the tail, you can just see the 'knee' sticking out. 

A couple of snaps from the garden.

This young Herring Gull hangs around  the garden a lot I assume it's one of last years youngsters. I know that if the adult male sees it he always 'sees it off'. It usually only comes to food when the adults have gone off somewhere. It isn't quite as adept at balancing on the seed tray as the adult and spends a lot of time like this....

But eventually.... "Look, look, I've done it" or should that be...

"You ain't seen me, right"

This female Mallard has started visiting the garden every day in order to carry out her morning ablutions on this sewer cover. She uses the water for a nice 'wash and brush up' then finishes off with a nice big duck dollop. Then she flies off. Charming! Let's just call it free lawn fertilizer.