Geograph - photograph every grid square

There is an amazing and typically-uncompromising poem called 'At Marsden Bay' by Peter Reading (Diplopic 1983)that combines Permian Geology, wildlife and the destructive force of youth. It is said to be based on an event which actually happened at the bay and sadly these things still occur Link

The first stanza is reproduced below:

Arid hot desert stretched here in the early
Permian Period - sand dune fossils
are pressed to a brownish bottom stratum.
A tropical saline ocean next silted
calcium and magnesium carbonates
over this bed, forming rough Magnesian
Limestone cliffs on the ledges of which
Rissa tridactyla colonizes -
an estimated four thousand pairs
that shuttle like close-packed tracer bullets
against dark sky between nests and North Sea.
The call is a shrill “kit-e-wayke, kit-e-wayke”,
also a low “uk-uk-uk” and a plaintive
“ee-e-e-eeh, ee-e-e-eeh”

A review can be found here Link
Here's another image that illustrates the poem NZ3965 : Gulls nesting on the cliff in Marsden Bay

See other images of Marsden Bay