Southampton Docks

The second backblip from our trip to Southampton, and the first in an occasional series of alternative viewpoints of familiar scenes and structures. It's also an attempt to increase the appeal of the flower blip, for whatever reason photos of wild plants leave many blippers unmoved - difficult for me as a botanist to understand.

This is a view of the the Prince Charles Container Port across the top of the Test estuary from the shore at Eling. The plant in the foreground is sea club-rush (Bolboschoenus maritimus). In the background is a container ship with cranes unloading it.

I am always drawn to this area when I visit my Dad. It reminds me of my time working for the Nature Conservancy Council twenty years ago in Kent. I was responsible for the work of the organisation in North Kent, looking after the coastal habitats of the Thames Estuary, the Medway and the Swale. These were areas of extensive grazing marshes, saltmarshes and mudflats, wild and remote - yet side-by-side with ports, power stations and industry. Areas where countless oystercatchers piped and wigeons whistled against the steady hum of human activity. An exciting place for birds and with a distinctive and unusual flora of plants and a rich invertebrate fauna.

That was an intense period in my life, a time when we began to turn the tide from the massive losses and degradation of coastal habitats to agricultural intensification and industrial development. It was an embattled time of confrontations and bruising public inquiries, a time when conservation seemed to have few friends and supporters. All that has changed, for now at least. But the feel of these coastal places where industry and nature sit uncomfortably together still stirs something deep inside me.

I could go on! Anyway, this was early morning with the low light illuminating the stigmas of the club-rush. Much of the day we spent helping Dad with his clutter clearing and sprucing up his small house. In the evening we went out for a pub meal in Fawley, then down to Calshot to watch the sun set. I shall try and get some of the photos of that loaded onto Flickr later.

Thank you to those who have enquired after my Dad. He is doing well back at home and in good spirits.

And no, I didn't get the perfect egret shot today either.