A long overdue blog and a week spent on the Suffolk coast have made me sit down and share some more East Anglian images.
Being an East Anglian I love all things about the region, but my heart will always be in the area I was born, the Suffolk coast.
My family had not always in that area but I have to thank my Great Grandfather James Baker for moving there in the late 1800’s followed soon after by his parents (my great, great Grandfather and Grandmother) to Pakefield from Mendham on the Norfolk / Suffolk border some 26 miles in land, being agricultural workers manual labour on the land was fast becoming hard to find at this time so James became a fisherman at a young age, in the census of April 1881 he was on board the fishing vessel ‘Sensation’ on the South coast, he would have been around the age of 14 or 15 then.
My Great grandfather’s headstone, the inscription reads ‘ I am resting so sweetly in Jesus now, I sail the wide sea no more, The tempest may sweep o’er the wild stormy deep, I am safe where the storm come no more. ‘
Every morning whilst staying in my caravan at Kessingland I would walk the dog along the beach to Benacre armed with my camera and my binoculars, I was lucky enough to see quite a few birds including a black redstart on the roof of a house near the beach. I would also see fellow dog walkers some I could tell were local some on holiday like myself, but after a few days I guess I was becoming a familiar sight with my dog, camera and binoculars always looking along the shoreline, out to sea or on the beach for wildlife or another image to take.
The first house in this image is where is where I saw the black redstart and as I was to find out later the houses are known as the ‘Twin peaks’ by the locals.
My last morning here was Saturday so I was up early determined to get one last walk in along the beach before packing up to drive home and it was this morning one of the locals stopped to talk to me as I was walking along the shoreline, he ‘spied’ the binoculars and asked if I had seen anything of interest, I told him I had seen the black redstart last Sunday on the roof of that house over there and pointed back over the beach at one of a pair of houses on the beach edge “Oh Twin peaks” he replied and as he detected I had a Lowestoft accent he obviously felt safe to tell me all the local birding knowledge, so as his black labrador dog sat on my left foot I then knew all about this local who until now had been on nodding terms.
It turned out he was also a fellow ‘birder’ but old age means when he is out walking he missed most birds as he stooped and as he said to me “I see more of my feet than I do birds” plus it is no good him having binoculars as his “Bloody hands shake all the time and everything would be a blur”, but he told me he lives up on the cliffs and has built a hut where he has his telescope and he looks out to see at the birds and then reeled of everything he sees from there, passage birds like spoonbill and bee eater, shearwater, great skua, the terns and the gulls, we talked about where I was born and where I live now, he asked about the birds I see in the fens and after a while we said our goodbyes.
As I watched him walk along the beach and the blood slowly returned to my left foot as his labrador had now followed him I realised why I love this region so much, the countryside and the people always so welcoming.
The fellow ‘birder’ and his dog walking back along the beach leaving me and my left foot with a warm feeling.
East Anglia the Wildlife, Landscape and People. 