Ray Marsh this month retires from being warden of Skippers Island nature reserve after an association of 60 years.

Bequeathed to the Essex Wildlife Trust in 1972, this 233-acre magical island in the Walton backwaters has restricted access, partly dictated by obstacles of saltmarshes and tidal channels. It featured as Mastodon Island in Arthur Ransome’s “Secret Water”.

The lack of much human disturbance has made it a prime wildlife refuge.

Nonetheless unlike anyone else, as its main custodian back to 1959, Ray reckons he has made the crossing there over 10,000 times.

This has been either by boat or at low tide narrow gangplanks and short muddy causeway.

Equipment for maintenance needs to be laboriously ferried across.

Most recently attempts to strengthen defences against seawall erosion have required quantities of posts and rolls of coir.

Exceptional surge tides with storms have caused overtopping and the long breached outer wall resulting in the island at highest tides splitting into three - in 2013 two-thirds of the island was flooded.

In the past it was intermittently used for summer grazing and somewhat confusingly in two ownerships.

In one place are signs of past cultivation but there is now reversion to saltmarsh or scrub from old hedges.

Generally much-declined nightingales, turtle doves and cuckoos come each summer to breed.

As with other wildlife, Ray has lovingly noted spring and autumn migrants as well as winter visitors, notably wildfowl and waders that augment the bird residents.

The discovery of the Fisher’s estuarine moth locally 50 years ago raised the site’s profile as headquarters for its hog fennel food-plant, as both virtually only found in UK around the Backwaters.

Ray’s fund of anecdotes of his experiences include in the early days when repelling poachers was not without risk.

He recalls rowing after a visitor in a dingy fast being swept out to sea on a falling tide. An escaped prisoner holed up on the island for a week ended with Ray summoning help and a mud bespattered village policeman coming to apprehend the fugitive - all in the days before mobile phones.

When he first glimpsed the island across the tidal channel on a family picnic he little realized his adult life would be transformed by the “island bug”.

He has stayed the course due to devotion to nature, all-round practicality and physical toughness.

For your diary: Thursday, October 24, Oct at 7.30pm – Caught on Camera, local wildlife by Trevor Clifford at Great Bentley Village Hall, organised by Tendring EWT.