WildlifeThey vanished from these mudflats for a decade. Nobody recorded exactly when the last one stopped coming, which is how most local extinctions are noticed — in retrospect, from an absence.
This winter the shallows below the watchtower were crowded again. Not a handful. Dozens, working the water with that half-open bill they sweep from side to side like a slow metal detector.
The obvious explanation is the embankment work upstream, which changed how the silt settles. The honest answer is that nobody knows, and that the forest occasionally gives something back without explaining itself.