Black-tailed godwits (Limosa limosa) are one of the signature species at Oare Marshes at this time of the year: I don't know how many there are there now, but it seems like many hundreds. The one shown above was landing on the East Flood about 10 days ago.

I had both the late afternoon sun and the wind at my back. The godwits seemed to be sorting themselves out for the evening, and some of them were flying around, occasionally landing in front of me. They flew in on a course diagonal to the wind, only turning into it at the very last moment. Their wings ruffled in the air like a combination of air brake and rudder, simultaneously slowing them down and changing course into the wind just before touch-down. As they rounded into the wind, the light just touched their faces, and gave wonderful shadow patterns from the wings.

I've not been back to Oare since then because – of course, yes! – we have another crisis here in the UK. For the last five years, as a country, we seem to have been psychologically addicted to crises of one sort or another. The big one for the last 18 months, self-evidently, has been the Covid-19 pandemic. But that is in something of a lull at present, with English case levels and hospitalisations stubbornly refusing to balloon as predicted now that the schools have returned for the autumn term. Cases are high among children at school, and there are significant numbers of breakthrough infections, notably in the vaccinated parents of school children; on the other hand, school-derived infections have not yet spread more widely into the vaccinated population (wood firmly touched!). Correspondingly, on the national scale, the pandemic is receding from the forefront of people's minds. So, we seem to need something else to keep our crisis quotient up.

Bang on cue, it turns out that the shortage of truckers we've known about for ages also includes the more specialist drivers who deliver fuel to petrol (gas) stations. The moment this became clear, people descended on the gas stations to fill up, causing the fuel to run out*. The lines for petrol and diesel stretch back onto the main roads nearest to the gas stations, bringing towns to a halt. Drivers have even been following tankers around to find out where they will be delivering fuel. Crisis quotient suitably topped up**, even if petrol tanks are not.

By chance, we filled up the car about a day before the crisis broke. To avoid having to spend hours on the hunt for gas, we've been using the car as little as possible, hence no trips out to photograph wildlife. So, for the foreseeable future, the godwits can fly unselfconsciously at Oare, without this photographer pointing his lens at them.

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*The politicians have a habit of calling this panic buying. But if (a) you don't trust the system (government, road haulage industry etc.) to solve this problem any time soon (b) you need a car or van to get to work, what are you supposed to do? In the presence of a government that seems competent at pretty much nothing, this is entirely rational and predictable behaviour.

**To add to the atmosphere of general joy, heating bills are going up following huge rises in wholesale natural gas prices. Among other things…