On the 10th June this year, I visited the Rye Harbour nature reserve, managed by the Sussex Wildlife Trust. There I met Sarah, who works with the Trust and who kindly agreed to show me around the reserve, in preparation for a walk we have planned to co-lead. Cycling down from the town of Rye into the reserve was a pretty pleasant experience, in spite of the inexorable showers to follow. I could taste the salinity of the waters in the air, the iodine of algae. There were linnets fluttering in hedges of sea buckthorn, their silvery undersides a sign of what would eventually emerge, their cherished vibrant, orange berries.
I met Sarah at the Reserve’s hub, where I prematurely sat myself down amongst a group of retired bird watchers, who were waiting for the volunteer lead. I apologised and moved myself to the children’s painting table, carrying my comically large coffee which was overflowing on my tray, when Sarah greeted me warmly. She suggested a circular walk of the reserve and I was immediately keen. ‘I hope you’ve brought waterproof trousers’ she smiled. Of course I was ill prepared for the caprice of coastal weather and laughed off my regret.
We walked over to the nearest bird watching hide. I conceded my lack of birding knowledge, as I ruffled the firm leaves of sea kale, which Sarah quickly noticed, commenting that the plant was going to seed and was especially important as a food source for the birds. Offering me a pair of binoculars, which were instantly more superior than the one’s I used for stargazing when I was younger, Sarah pointed out the birds she spotted on the salt marsh with ease. Subtle distinctions between sandwich and common terns were lost on me, but soon I accumulated the nuanced perception requisite, sandwich terns with a cap that looked more like waxed hair than a beanie.
I spotted oystercatchers and we spoke about the previously extinct avocet, now wading on the marsh in healthy numbers, an emblem for the RSPB. In the far distance, way beyond the pools where herons and egrets stood still as ice, Sarah pointed to the rather eery looking Mary Stanford Lifeboat House. Recounting the local history I was ignorant of, she spoke of the 17 crewmen who sailed on an early morning winter’s day in 1928, to save a Latvian ship said to have capsized. The crewmen never returned from sea, unbeknownst that the ship had already been saved. All of their bodies were found, apart from one, some of them initially spotted by a small boy collecting driftwood.
By the time we reached the beach, where the walking path became shingle, my trousers were utterly soaked by rainfall and sea spray alike. Sarah offered to walk me back the way we came. I said I was fine either way, as I didn’t want to drag her around in the wet weather. She reassured me that she was more than used to the conditions, better prepared than I was, and could probably sense in my expression my urge to learn more about the harbour. She smiled and pretty much straight away started referring to the teasel plant growing on the shingle, a semi-carnivorous plant that drowned the insects that landed in small pools of water collected in basins along its stem. This was a plant Charle’s Darwin’s son Francis studied, who hypothesised the carnivorous nature of the plant, which putatively absorbs the organic bodies of the insects, a phenomenon still contested today.
Along the coastal grasses growing on the edges of the reserve, Sarah pointed to the various orchids, including pyramidl and common spotted. We munched on black mustard flowers, as we spoke about the challenges of coastal foraging. As an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific interest), the Rye Harbour is protected and therefore technically prohibits foraging. Sarah conceded, ‘It’s a grey area, I was a professional forager for years. We can’t really encourage foraging, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen and it also doesn’t mean we wouldn’t ever turn a blind eye’. We agreed that foraging still occupies an ambiguous place in the world of conservation. Its certainly something someone can be accredited in, but this never means that it doesn’t face seemingly intractable challenges. Bird watching might be considered a more acceptable and normative nature based hobby, mainly because it upholds a certain distance between us and the nature we are appreciating. There is a fine line to foraging, where the desire to appreciate can become an ostensibly rapacious act.
As we returned to the reserve’s hub, we were met with the whirring noise coming from a machine, attached with a large vacuum like a hoover. Effectively it was, its function to clean the salt marsh and estuary after Southern Water leaked innumerable bio-beads into the water ways. A clean-up that could take years to expunge the marshlands from chemicals and heavy metals. Under the machine, I noticed the sea purslane, which stretched out onto the estuary, its glossy oval leaves attached to thick red stems. ‘You can take some if you like’ Sarah said, noticing the look of wonder I failed to downplay. ‘It pairs great with fish’. ‘Are you sure that’s okay?’. Sarah nodded, ‘A few leaves won’t hurt’. ‘ I sometimes let the kids nibble on the raw ones, but with the spill you’ll want to wash and cook them properly’. She left me to pick some of the plants, their stems tough and hard to harvest. A handful would suffice, a naturally salty and deliciously wild accompaniment, to an otherwise domestic meal.
