I spent a few hours watching the birds on 28th November from Harty and the following day I went to Shellness on the north eastern shore of Sheppey to watch the geese and hopefully catch them on film in flight.
Instead I saw them feeding on the grass in the paddocks close to the ocean. The Isle of Sheppey is shaped like a lozenge with the larger, rounded end at Sheerness and Queenborough in the north and Harty Island and Shellness to the east where it is remote and marshy with the land sloping to the sea marshes where the birds winter. This is in addition to the wintering grounds of Elmley marshes on the Swale side of the island. These birds are on the coast facing the Channel and the North Sea. Regular winter visitors they wheel around in flocks of five or six hundred and are a delight for bird watchers.