Amid the mudflats

If you’ve been waking up at 3 a.m. after yet another nightmare about climate change, there’s been a well-timed antidote on Radio Four this week. On The Estuary (made by the wildlife team, Chris Watson as sound recordist, Mike Dilger as naturalist and Stephen Head as the landscape historian), we heard how The Wash on the east coast of England has ebbed and flowed through the centuries. Maybe we are entering a new meteorological phase where sea levels will rise and what were once silty fields and verdant pastures will disappear under water. But what’s new? The estuary of the fenland rivers has changed radically over the last 12,000 years since the icecap melted and the North Sea became a huge tundra plain. We humans are as nothing; mere witnesses to natural changes over which we have no control.

The soundtrack of this evocative series of 15-minute shorts (broadcast mid-afternoon from Monday to Friday) had very few words, but instead created vivid aural pictures of that vast wetland wilderness, mudflats shimmering as the sea rushes in and out, thousands of birds wheeling overhead, squawking, squealing, hooting.