God! What A Sight

I went for a walk at high tide along the seawall at Maylandsea towards Mundon. A flock of waders took the air and wheeled around Lawling Creek. Suddenly they dropped as one onto a finger of land still exposed. Luckily I was wearing my new Gumleaf wellies and scrambled across the saltings. I was amazed at how close I was able to get to them.

At first they ignored me with their heads looking backwards and their long beaks tucked under their wings. I suppose they were waiting for the food-rich mud to be uncovered.

Then they took off. What a sight! I think they might be Black-tailed Godwits. I wondered how they got that name. Evidently it means good creature, as in good to eat. Black-tailed Godwits, which bred throughout the fenlands of eastern England, were caught by various means. Eggs were collected for food and adults were shot, netted or snared. Those caught alive were fattened on bread and milk before being sent to the London markets. This killing of birds on the breeding ground along with the widespread draining of fenland resulted in the Black-tailed Godwit becoming generally extinct as a breeding bird in Britain by the mid eighteen hundreds. It would be another hundred years before the Godwit returned in any numbers to breed in the fenlands and be granted the protection it deserves.