Sunday 24 February 2008

Dungeness

Dungeness is a promentary built up from ridges of shingle that mark the position of centuries of beaches. As it sticks out into the sea, miles from anywhere, it has attracted a nuclear power station, lighthouses, strange shacks, fishing boats, flotsam and jetsam, unusual plants, unusual birds and the usual birders. The Dungeness National Nature Reserve is 1031 hectares (or 2½ thousand acres), and the whole shingle area forms the largest example in Europe.
Derek Jarman's cottage and garden

Isn't that a huge loco?
Er, no, actually it's rather small.

I spent a pleasant hour sitting on the point (ouch, let me rephrase that - sitting on the shingle at the point) listening to the swoosh of the waves and watching the passage of gulls, auks and cormorants - up to 60 sitting just offshore at a time. Also a couple of Red-Throated Divers and a few Guillemots benefitted from the food underwater where the tide eddied around the point. OK - you don't want to read any more.
No really - the next bit's horrible. Go back to ebay or whatever.
OK, I warned you. There was a rabbit at the side of the track to the RSPB reserve, being attacked by a Stoat - maybe the rabbit had been injured by a car, or maybe the stoat had run it down.



You can tell it's a stoat - it' stoatally different as it has a dark tip to it stail.

5 comments:

Simon said...

Amazing pics of the Stoat and Rabbit!

Mary said...

Even though it grosses me out and I love bunny rabbits....the photos are amazing! The loco was a fooler. Your Dungeness is quite different from the one in the state of Washington, where the crabs come from :-)

Mike said...

Hi there, thank you for the kind comment you left on my blog. You have a great blog here and I am sure I will visit again. Nature in its raw form and caught on camera you cant beat it, nice one. Mike.

Sandpiper (Lin) said...

Fascinating place and pictures.

Anonymous said...

Dungeness is a dump...