Field notes
The coast, written down the same evening.
A quiet diary of tides, salt-marsh plants and coastal birds, kept on the Waddenzee shore and the Frisian islands from a flat in Amsterdam.
Kept from Amsterdam, Noord-Holland and the Wadden Sea coast, Netherlands — since 2021.
- 13Jun2026
A winter dike walk: geese, low light and an empty coast
Between November and February this coast empties of people and fills with geese, and a walk on the seawall becomes the most reliable good day out I know. It is also the season that most punishes anyone who dresses for the walking rather than for the standing still.
Read the full note · 6 minutes
- 29Sept2025
Mudflat walking: footing, etiquette and knowing when to turn back
Walking out onto the flats at low tide is the oldest way to travel between this coast and the islands, and it is genuinely dangerous in ways that a green field of mud does not advertise. The first thing worth saying is that I do not do the long crossings alone.
Read the full note · 9 minutes
- 21May2025
A September migration morning on the Waddenzee shore
The Wadden Sea in autumn is a refuelling station on a flyway that runs from the Arctic to West Africa, and the drama is entirely governed by water. When the flats go under, the birds have to be somewhere, and for two hours you can watch where.
Read the full note · 7 minutes
- 06Oct2024
Sea lavender and glasswort: a salt marsh through the seasons
The plants on a salt marsh are arranged by how long they can stand being under salt water, which means the vegetation is a map of the tide drawn in colour. Once I understood that, the marsh stopped being green and started being legible.
Read the full note · 8 minutes
- 18Apr2024
Reading a tide table before a walk on the salt marsh
For my first year on this coast I checked the tide the way I check a train time, which is to say too late and for the wrong place. The habit that fixed it takes four minutes at the kitchen table the night before.
Read the full note · 7 minutes