DISCOVER WHY BARROW IS RANKED NO.1 IN ENGLAND FOR ITS NATURAL ASSETS

With 60km of coastline it is no surprise that Barrow in Furness ranked no.1 for its landscape and natural heritage in the 2016 RSA Heritage Index for England. Barrow boasts a number of nature reserves where visitors can see a diverse range of wildlife, including; Cumbria’s only grey seal colony, Natterjack toads and other amphibians, a vast range of birds including; Europe’s southernmost colony of breeding Eider Duck and colonies of Herring and Black-back Gull which are of national importance.

Walney is also the only place in the world where you will find the flowering Geranium sanguineum var. striatum – otherwise known as the Walney Geranium.

SOUTH WALNEY NATURE RESERVE

With stunning views across Morecambe bay, this shingle island reserve is full of interest and a fantastic place for bird watching. South Walney Nature Reserve is home to the only grey seal colony in Cumbria.

Highlights include:

• Grey seals can be seen at high tide year round at their only haul-out location in Cumbria
• Breeding eider duck, great black-backed gull, oystercatcher, ringed plover, shelduck
• During Spring you can see courting eider ducks and catch the returning spring migrants like the wheatear, willow warbler and sandwich terns. Thrift and sea campion come into flower.
• During summer see nesting gulls, eiders, oystercatchers and ringed plovers. Arctic, little and sandwich terns are summer visitors. Burnet moths and grayling butterflies are on the wing and viper’s bugloss, yellow horned poppy and sea lavender are in flower.
• During Autumn catch the flocks of migratory curlew, spotted redshank, redstart and pink-footed geese.
• During winter you can see huge numbers of waders and wildfowl feeding and roosting around the nature reserve.
• Throughout the year look out for barn owls, short-eared owls, peregrines and grey seals at high tide.

NORTH WALNEY NATURE RESERVE AND SANDSCALE HAWS

Both North Walney and Sandscale Haws were individually named as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), however, in 1990 they were combined with three other locations to form the Duddon Estuary SSSI.

The Duddon Estuary is significant for natterjack toads. It supports one fifth of the national population of the rare amphibian that is only found at 50 sites in the UK, of which five are in the Duddon Estuary.

The Duddon Estuary is an Important Bird Area. Species to be seen include pintail, red knot and common redshank with wintering waterfowl including common shelduck, red-breasted mergansers, Eurasian oystercatchers, ringed plover, dunlin and Eurasian curlew.

In 1998 it was designated a Special Protection Area (SPA) under the Birds Directive. It qualified under three criteria:

• regularly there are over 20,000 wintering waterfowl.
• breeding population of sandwich terns
• overwintering populations of knot, pintail and redshank; populations on passage of ringed plover and sanderling.

The estuary is botanically rich with salt marsh, sand dune and shingle communities, including a nationally rare shingle vegetation community at  North Walney.

Shingle species include sea sandwort, spear-leaved orache, sea rocket and sea kale. All the dune grasslands at Sandscale Haws and North Walney support a rich flora with the rare dune helleborine.

FOULNEY ISLAND

Arctic and little tern breed on this island nature reserve during the summer whilst in autumn and winter it is a great site to see waders.

Highlights of a visit include:

• During spring an exciting time with courting eider ducks and terns starting to arrive back on the reserve. Thrift and sea campion are in flower.
• During summer three species of tern are busy feeding chicks. Supreme long-distance travellers, Arctic terns, migrate vast distances to nest on the island’s shingle banks after spending winter in the Antarctic.
• During autumn the sea aster is in flower. Thousands of Brent geese, curlew, dunlin, knot and oystercatcher provide a spectacle in autumn and winter – look for great crested grebe, red-breasted merganser, cormorant and common scoter offshore.
• During Winter it a great time to spot birds such as brent geese, wigeon, knot and dunlin. You might also see long-tailed duck, Slovenian grebe or the occasional diver on the sea amongst thousands of eider.