50 years ago: A day on the desolate dunes

Norfolk
I have just enjoyed a day on the dunes and salt marshes of Norfolk’s most desolate stretch of coast that runs westwards from Cley to the Wash. I found the higher saltings aglow with the fiery and purple tints of autumn, suffusing the foliage of their succulent plants, including the shrubby sea-blite and the marsh samphire gathered from the mudflats for pickling. In places there were great white drifts of sea aster topped with fluffy seed-heads, while short reeds growing in brackish ditches were boldly streaked with gold and orange following the first touch of frost. I noticed that marram and other sand grasses had flowered profusely this year, as usually happens in exceptionally fine summers; now their bleached and glistening spikes stood in bold silhouettes against the scape of sky and sea. Flocks of chattering fieldfares newly arrived from Scandinavia moved in restless, straggling lines across the dunes and I saw some of them dive into a thicket of sea buckthorn where orange berries redolent of wine attracted them. Other incoming migrants included wave after wave of lapwings passing to the west and a few small, closely packed flocks of starlings. At Holme Bird Observatory I saw one laggard cock redstart perched like a sentinel on a bush and a few swallows and house martins still lingered at this lonely outpost. A pool behind the dunes there was crowded with wildfowl and among the waders along its shore I saw two greenshank rather late on their autumn passage. New arrivals in the sheltering pines included some goldcrests and a great grey shrike.