Coastal Birdwatching by Season: What to Look For in the Bay

The bay does not look the same twice. In April the mudflats are crowded with birds that will be gone by June; in August the same flats can hold nothing but glare and a few loafing gulls; by January the water seems to fill with ducks and grebes you never see in summer. Birdwatching here is less about ticking off species than learning a rhythm — which birds use the bay, when they arrive, and where they choose to stand while they are with us.

What follows is a season-by-season guide to what to expect and how to look, written for the ordinary morning walker with binoculars as much as for the list-keeper. Learn the pattern once and every visit starts with a question worth answering.

Spring: Arrivals, Territories and the First Chicks

Spring is the busiest and least predictable season. Migrants move through on their way north, residents pair up and sing, and the first chicks appear before the last cold snap has finished with us. Weather decides the timing far more than the calendar does. A spell of warm southerly air can drop birds into the bay overnight; a week of cold northerlies can hold everything back and leave you staring at an empty marsh.

What to watch for

Shallow brackish pools are the place to start. Black-winged stilts arrive early and immediately begin their high, piping complaints at anything that comes near. Shelduck pair up and squabble over burrows. On shingle and bare sand above the tide line, look for Kentish plovers running in short bursts and stopping dead, and little ringed plovers on the gravel margins. Both are small enough to miss until you learn to scan the ground rather than the water.

In the scrub behind the beach, birdsong returns in layers: Cetti's warbler exploding from cover without warning, Sardinian warblers scratching out their short verses, fan-tailed warblers clattering overhead like tiny insects. Raptors pass through too — marsh harriers quartering low over reeds, and if you are lucky an osprey hanging over open water in April or May.

Where to stand

Pick a spot with a clear view of two habitats at once — the edge of a saltmarsh where it meets open water, or a dune ridge looking down onto wet sand. Sit or stand still for ten minutes before you start scanning. Birds settle faster than most people expect, and the first few minutes of any watch are usually wasted by movement.

Summer: Nesting Grounds and Quiet Corners

By June the bay belongs to the breeders, and the birdwatcher's job changes from finding birds to not disturbing them. Sandwich terns plunge into the water offshore with a splash you can hear from the path; little terns hover and drop with far less drama on the sandy shallows. Ringed plover chicks — tiny, speckled, almost invisible — may be feeding on the same stretch of beach you want to walk along.

Watch for the broken-wing display. A plover that drags itself away from you with one wing trailing is not injured; it is leading you away from a nest or chicks. Take the hint, back off the way you came, and give that patch of sand a wide berth for the rest of the season.

If a bird stops feeding to watch you, you are already too close.

Summer afternoons are a poor time to look: heat shimmer turns the far mudflats into a wobbling mirage, and in July the cicadas can drown out every birdsong in the scrub. Go at first light, work the shoreline while the air is still cool, and be gone by mid-morning. Late July is worth a second visit, when adults look scruffy in moult and the first dispersing juveniles begin to turn up on beaches they were not raised on.

Autumn: The Wader Weeks

Autumn starts early here and lasts. From late August, waders trickle south and then pour through, and the bay becomes a working kitchen for birds that have flown a long way. This is the season for mudflats and shallow water, for counting rather than admiring.

Learn a few feeding styles and identification gets easier. Dunlin stitch the mud in a steady, sewing-machine rhythm. Turnstones flip weed and pebbles with a flick of the head, working the tideline like small bulldozers. Sanderling chase the retreating waves on open sand and sprint back from the next one. Curlews probe deep with that long, down-curved bill, while godwits wade belly-deep and sweep from side to side.

Terns gather in roosts in September, and the first winter ducks appear on the lagoons. On a clear morning after a night of north-easterly wind, stand somewhere with a wide view of the sky: pipits, wagtails, swallows and the odd harrier all move on visible migration, often high and easy to miss.

A tide note worth remembering

Do not assume low tide is always best. On big high tides the mudflats disappear and every wader in the bay is pushed onto a few remaining roosts, where you can see more birds in one scan than in an hour of walking. Check the tide table before you choose your morning.

Winter: The Quiet, Crowded Months

Winter looks empty and is not. The birds are fewer in species and far greater in number, and they sit still, which makes them easy to study properly. Shelduck, wigeon and teal raft up on sheltered water; great crested grebes dive in the channel; cormorants stand with wings spread on any post or rock that will hold them, while shags fish further out.

Walk the sandy beach and you will find sanderling and turnstone; work the estuary and there will be dunlin, redshank and curlew; look at the harbour wall and a black redstart or a rock pipit may be feeding in the cracks. Kingfishers are here too, though you usually hear the thin whistle before you see the flash of blue. After a gale, spend half an hour looking at open water — gannets, divers and grebes are all more likely then.

A Seasonal Checklist

• Spring (March–May): black-winged stilt, Kentish plover, singing warblers, passage osprey and harriers.
• Summer (June–August): nesting terns and plovers, juvenile gulls, first dispersing waders in late July.
• Autumn (September–November): dunlin, curlew, godwit, turnstone, tern roosts, visible migration on clear mornings.
• Winter (December–February): shelduck, wigeon, teal, grebes, divers after gales, kingfisher and rock pipit.

Before You Set Out

Take a tide table and a scope if you have one; the bay rewards distance. Boots that can handle mud, a hat, water, and a notebook or a phone note for what you saw and where. Keep to paths along dune and saltmarsh edges, keep dogs on a lead anywhere there is bare sand or shingle between March and August, and skip the birdsong recordings — a few seconds of playback can cost a nesting bird a meal or a clutch.

Finally, write it down. A line per visit — date, tide, weather, three species that stood out — turns a pleasant walk into a record, and within a year you will know your own bay better than any guidebook can tell you.

Photo: No-longer-here / Pixabay