mudflat

The mudflats offer a winter home to thousands of migrating swans.

Halosere A plant community in a succession that starts on land periodically inundated by the sea. Haloseres include salt-and flooding-tolerant pioneer communities on mudflats and saltmarshes.

The mudflat was teeming with crabs and other marine life.

Birdwatchers often visit the mudflat to observe migratory birds.

The mudflat is an important habitat for many species of shorebirds.

The children enjoyed playing in the mudflat, searching for shells and crabs.

The mudflat stretches for miles along the coastline.

Local fishermen harvest clams and oysters from the mudflat.

The mudflat is exposed at low tide and covered at high tide.

The mudflat is an important feeding ground for migratory birds.

The mudflat ecosystem supports a diverse range of plant and animal species.

Researchers study the biodiversity of the mudflat to understand its ecological importance.

Mudskippers are not the only animals to take advantage of the mudflat buffet.

They settled on the mudflats of Chongming Island and Nanhui tidal flat near Shanghai.

And at the other end are species like mudskippers that nonchalantly hop around mudflats for days at a time.

The meltwater deposits thousands of tons of nutrient-rich silt into the delta each year, building mudflats 600 feet deep.

And this is the lifecycle on the saltflat, all of which we call extremophiles, and which eke out an existence in a mudflat like this.

On the train out to meet Spencer, I had marvelled at the Pitsea horizon, a nonsensical Thames estuary hillside towering over the mudflats, a Brecon Beacon of waste.

What you see when you glance at this environment are a bunch of what appear to be tunnels or mounds here, and these are made by the gases produced by the microbes living in this mudflat area.