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Norfolk in Late Summer – Knots

Knot spectacular

The sun rose up and the moon came down. The tide rose high and the knots flew in.

What it’s all about
The breath-taking flight of tens of thousands of wading birds from the mudflats of The Wash to the shingle around the in-shore lagoons is one of nature’s most impressive sights. The birds are pushed off their roosts by very high tides and move in large, swirling groups to drier spots.

 

High-energy mudflats
The waders come to Snettisham because the mudflats are full of food such as shellfish and worms. It has been said that in every square meter of Wash mud there is as much energy as in a Mars bar, so taking in the whole Wash mudflats, that’s the equivalent of enough Mars bars to stretch from here to New Zealand and beyond.

 

Special species
There are many wading birds dependent on the food in The Wash. Some of these, such as bar- and black-tailed godwits, sanderlings, turnstones, grey plovers and oystercatchers, are migrants from distant shores. There are also many golden plovers, redshanks and dunlins.

 

All of these species are involved in the high tide wader spectacular, but the real stars of the show are tens of thousands of knots, which come from breeding grounds in Arctic Canada. The Wash is also an important refuge in winter for thousands of ducks and geese.

 

Getting the timing right
For the spectacular to really have the ‘wow’ factor, two things need to happen: there needs to be a high enough tide to cover the mud (this makes the wading birds fly off) and sufficient daylight to see the birds. Generally, these conditions occur on a few days each month from July through to April.

 

[Text from RSPB display boards]

 

We went with Nick Acheson and Ed Hutchings of Wildlife Worldwide.

 

The photos are a combination of two early morning visits to see the display.  Both days were spectacular, but on the second the sun came out and the light was very different.  A peregrine or two were also stiring the flocks into mesmerising shapes.

 

Take off
This is generally regarded as the most spectacular stage. As the tide covers the very last sections of mud, the birds have to take flight, sometimes 30,000 or more in wheeling flocks. It’s essential that all the mud is covered, and this can be up 30 to 60 minutes before high tide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Landing
The large wheeling flocks pushed off the mud in the ‘take-off’ stage often land on the islands and shingle banks in front of Sanctuary and Roost Hides and stay there until the tide begins to drop. Depending on the height of the tide, they may stay there for an hour or more after high tide.

 

 

 

 

Going back
Even though they can’t see the sea, the birds seem to know when the tide is dropping, and they leave the pits in long, smoky lines, heading back out on to The Wash. This starts an hour or so after high tide and lasts for up to 20 minutes.

 

 

 

The lone Avocet and 70,000 Knots

 

 

 

 

 

And finally

 

Thanks to Nick for this photo of Penny with the magic hat.
[Disclosure, random spectator standing to the left of Penny has been removed with Photoshop]

 

Please see

Norfolk in Late Summer – Not Knots for more photos from this trip

 

More holidays with Wildlife Worldwide

and

for more photos of Cley and the north Norfolk coast.

 

6 replies on “Norfolk in Late Summer – Knots”

Hello David, wow some of these pictures are really amazing well done. What a magnificent reminder of the trip, I keep looking at them over and over again. Really special thank you for sharing them. Kind regards Mike

Guardian Country diary: The magic and mayhem of a sky full of waders
Snettisham, Norfolk: Early starts don’t get rewarded more handsomely than this, the sight of hundreds of thousands of birds bringing the air to life

The high-tide roost at this RSPB reserve is among the most spectacular events in all English nature. On the morning of my visit, it involved thousands of oystercatchers and bar-tailed godwits with tens of thousands of red knots, who, by this season, have turned to the white-and-grey of winter plumage.

 

Yet in the earliest post-dawn sunlight they presented across a spotless western horizon as no more than black fragments pouring on to the Wash tide-edge a mile away. I hurried on, praying not to miss a moment. By 7.30am, colours finally swelled up through the scene: the ice-blue of the heavens, the saltmarsh layered green and red and brown, topped by a white-grey carpet thick with stationary birds. The tide was still rising and pushing the flocks into further adjustments, when their display blossomed into something unforgettable.

 

It manifested first as momentary pipes of flying waders drawn over the incoming sea. As more of the 100,000 rose, so these all-brown funnels could have been mistaken for something inanimate, like bands of mud, except as they stretched they flickered white with underwings caught in sunlight. Then all climbed and amassed mid‑sky as a solid steepling cloud – a vision outdone only by the boiling thrum of wings. The differential in the speed of light and sound waves meant there was a slight disconnect in its unfolding whole, but the sheer volume of it – like muttering thunder – had no equal for vitality in my half-century of natural history.

 

The air itself was alive. Bright autumn light now chiselled the whole into a million brilliant details: three female pintails climbing somehow through a globe of flying waders; a flock of oystercatchers flickering black and white as they sheeted to the water line; and everywhere in atomised sub-flocks, knots, rising and twisting and crashing back upon themselves, then scattering like silvered chaff through the darker seed of godwits spiring outwards.

 

It was music. It was theatre. It was mayhem. It was magic. It was beyond words, beyond price, in fact, beyond any kind of human measure, except to say that it makes all our lives richer merely to know that it is there. Now.

Mark Cocker

Tue 15 Oct 2024 05.30 BST

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