Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

It used to be a meadow behind the seawall a few years ago. Then the sea was allowed in under the distant bridge to flood on every tide.

How quickly the plants responded. Out went the agriculture, in came the saltmarsh. The ancient rithes, infilled a century and more ago, refilled their wandering course with salt water once again. Seablite colonised.

Then the small black seeds of sea purslane, on which teal feed, were washed through the breach in the wall and spread like wildfire. Sea aster and samphire followed.

This managed retreat absorbs the punch of the waves on the walls.

In many parts of farmland, especially in Essex, it has saved expensive seawall maintenance. Of course, it can't be allowed everywhere but with sea- level rises it makes sense over some uninhabited land.

This is the sort of habitat used by some of the 50,000 waterfowl which inhabit Chichester Harbour every winter. It is very like those salt pools inside the shingle seawall at Cley-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast, so I suppose you might expect at times to see some of the rarities.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette January 9