At new moon in April 2023, I headed up to the Norfolk coast to a place I’d last visited on the previous Boxing Day night - Snettisham Beach, famous for its vast tidal mudflats that attract migrating birds in staggering numbers.  It was - amazingly for a new moon - forecast to be clear all night on every forecast model I could find, so it seemed like an opportune time to plan an all-nighter.  I felt a bit cheeky doing this as it was a school night, but coffee was made for a reason and it's clear that reason was astronomers.

My foreground subject for the evening was the large dilapidated jetty, which was built in the Second World War to allow gravel extracted from the nearby pits to be moved by boat, destined to help build the concrete runways needed to support the American bombers being stationed in the UK.  I was accompanied all night by the incredible sound of the birds out on the flats - they never ceased and it was a fantastic soundtrack to the crystal clear night.

I had a few shots planned for the night.  First of all I set up two timelapses from opposite sides of the jetty - one to capture the Milky Way rising and one to capture a star trails shot.  I left these running for a few hours while I went for a nap in a bird hide that overlooks the beach. I named this image "Serpentine" as I love the curved channel in the mudflat, mirroring the trailing stars, and the wonderful scaly texture of the mudcracks.