Erosion, Oystercatchers and a Snake.

Today after a pointless visit to the job centre who could only offer work experience in supermarkets (not even paid) I went for a cliff top and canal walk. On the field opposite sainsburys supermarket (no work experience here please) was a small flock of oystercatchers. I snapped a photo as I like these birds before a dog, who is in the background in the photo, chased them off. So I carried on onto the cliffs with mother.

The cliffs where very windy and gave a nasty chill. It made the walking a bit more difficult with added resistance. I havent crossed the cliffs for a while and was surprised with what i saw. The cliffs have gone! Well in places it had eroded severely. 

In places the sheer cliffs had formed slopes right down to the beach far below. In places the cliff path has completely gone. While walking I keep a GPS programme which plots your route on. When looking at the route back home I saw that as the map images are old it looked like we where walking far from the cliff edge when infact we were on the edge.  

In places the cliff had opened into wide fissures. 

Further on after the cliff path we walked down the canal. At places a small stream runs alongside. As I had some sheep excrement on my boots and we were going to a cafe I got in and washed them off. In the river I saw what I thought was a dead snake. It was infact alive, just. 

Now snakes as you know are cold blooded which means they gain heat from the surrounds. This one was not moving in an ice cold river not too far from sunset. I decided it was not going to survive in the cold river especially if it freezes. I carefully removed him and you could she the cold had affected him as he hardly moved. I decided that just incase he had been in the river intentionally I would put him on the bank where he could either get warm and leave or return for a bath. Im no expert in snakes, i do know a puff adder, boomslang, cape cobra and  molesnake but they are south african species. Here we have grass snake, adder and a lizard with no legs the slow worm. Its not a slow worm and don't think its an adder. It may be a female in the brown though. If anyone thinks its not a grass snake please correct me.

When I lifted him out and I saw his jaw looked a bit odd. Snakes can dislocate there jaws to swallow food so this may be what happened but whether the grass snake does I don't know. He did have a bulge in his body which could have been a mouse. This may also be why he was in the river, attacking his prey then being in the river got too cold to get out. Who knows?

Anyway after a nice tea in the cafe we walked past him and he had started to move into the vegetation. I hope he does well.

Thats all for now and as I said in a previous post my camera trap is currently in South Africa.

Stay tuned for hopefully some photos from there.