The lives and souls of the Solway
Last updated 05:29, Friday, 16 May 2008
All the barnacle geese on the island of Svalbard, way up beyond the Arctic Circle, take an annual winter break on the waters of the Solway. Other birds who fly further south, to winter on African shores, also break their migratory flights on the sands of the Solway.
Birdwatching in the Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, by Bryan Irving. £3
There is a constant movement of birds over the flat sands and the windy salt marshes. The two high tides every day cover and expose the vast sands and the turning of the year’s seasons makes for a continually changing world.
The Solway is still an area of comparative peacefulness, an area where wildlife, and particularly birds, can follow the patterns of the year undisturbed.
The coast there is protected as an area of outstanding natural beauty and much of that beauty is the life and colour the birds bring to the area.
If you walk out by Old Sandsfield, where the river channel is braided into sand and gravel banks, in the autumn and winter you will be able to watch the wildfowl and waders who use the river corridor for roosting and feeding. Here you might see the serene whooper swans gliding on the waters or watch the barnacle geese heavily lift up into the sky. At other times there may be pink footed geese, goosanders, red-breasted mergansers, goldeneyes, wigeon, brilliant flashes of kingfishers, cormorants, grey herons and peregrines and merlins in search of prey.
Further west you can explore the coast between Drumburgh and Port Carlisle. The estuary is fringed by salt marshes and, inland, beyond the band of agricultural land, are the raised mires. After there have been storms out in the Irish Sea unusual birds can sometimes be seen in this area, blown off course or seeking shelter. At various times kittiwakes, pomarine skuas, storm petrels and great skuas have been seen in this area.
Anthorn is dominated by its giant antenna, but the heart of the Cardurnock Peninsula is the peat moss of Bowness Common. Snipe, meadow pipits and teal are to be found on the raised mires and on the salt marshes, in the winter, there is usually a large concentration of golden plover.
The Wampool and Waver flow sluggishly into the marshes and mudbanks and sands that constitute Morecambe Bay. It is, in fact, one of the largest areas of salt marsh in the country. In the early spring there can be as many as twenty thousand geese in the bay.
When the wildfowling season ends in February, wigeon and pintail ducks return to the area. The old ponds, once used for salt-making at Salta and Saltcoates now support breeding birds. The shellducks actually choose to breed in old rabbit burrows.
Equally versatile are the cormorants who have established a large nesting colony on some wooden piles that lie just off Skinburness Bay and were used as training targets during the Second World War.
Grune Point is home to scaup, tern and ring plover, and Silloth, predictably, attracts the gulls. The sand dunes further down the coast at Beckfoot and Mawbray draw shelduck, stonechat, reed bunting, skylarks, meadow pipits, sedge warblers and lesser whitethroats.
This brief guide to the birds of the Solway is a revelation. Brian Irving’s concise text is the product of years of observation and his photographs are not only useful for ready identification, but superb studies. There is a fine picture of a bright-eyed and alert stonechat perched on brilliant gorse.
There is a world out there by the waters of the Solway, a world that provides some of the finest spectacles in nature. This beautifully produced little booklet is the just the introduction needed to bring that world to life.
Birdwatching in the Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com
