This time it wasn’t the sight of all those fellow creatures that moved me. Rather, it was their sounds I tracked, and I could have closed my eyes and been just as affected. I should add further that on this visit there was none of what I’d seen two days previously: then it was mainly knots and godwits, from the northernmost rim of our planet, twisting and converging like a balled fist as peregrine and merlin made forays at the tide edge.