Williamson Weekly Nature Notes July 15 2009

I find it easily as fascinating as the downs. All those billions of pebbles wearing away in the endless action of the waves, all making a sound which is so calming.

I like to sit on the hot pebbles for an hour or so and just let the sea take the strain. The good old summer sun shines down making the sea silver, or bright blue, depending on its angle. The clouds scurry past sometimes, making a battleship grey of the water, and then the wind may make you white fountains along the groynes.

Of course, if you look closely at the pebble beaches you can entertain yourself with all the life that lives among them. In some places so detailed that much time and effort has gone into trying to conserve the best bits still untrampled by the human foot.

At Pagham, Sussex still has one of the best stands of sea kale left in Britain.

My photograph of the boy looking towards Bognor was the inspiration for the Desert Island Discs music. The sea often is this beautiful blue in summer.

Then we also have these enormous greeny blue leaves that echo the aquamarine colours of sea and sky. Sea kale flowers in July with clusters of white blossom quickly turning to seed. Some of the plants may be a century old. They have survived because they are too big to be trampled down.

There should be many more plants here as well such as yellow sea poppy which has long seed pods, as long and curved as a curlew's beak. Sometimes you find hare's foot clover here, with bird's foot trefoil and woody nightshade. A careful count among all these pebbles could give you 90 species.

Then there are the birds I photographed there two black-headed gulls which were within three or four yards, picking up scraps from my sandwiches thrown out for them.

Obviously they had met humans before.

When the pictures were developed I was surprised how camouflaged they were among the pebbles, the plumage picking up all those greys and whites, browns and gingers which you get in flints.

These two were losing their spring plumage of sooty black heads, but their crimson feet and beaks remain. There were ring plovers there as well, Mediterranean gulls, herring gulls, and oyster catchers.

A truly great feast for the eyes and ears is the seaside of Sussex.