Adults are very smart and distinguished in their breeding plumage, sporting a silvery-grey back and upperwings, a clean white underbody, and a distinctive black cap. Their bill is long and orangey-red with a black tip, while their legs are short and red. In flight, they show a buoyant, floating style with narrow, angular wings, often hovering before plunging to catch prey.
Category Archives: #Coast
Northern Shores: Thrift
Thrift is a member of the Plumbaginaceae (aka Leadwort) tribe, a small and tough family that specialises in harsh habitats, having evolved ‘chalk glands’ that excrete salts, allowing it to flourish in places where weaker plants fear to venture, like our storm-lashed, salt-sprayed coastlines.
Springtime Lepidoptera on the Fylde Coast Dunes
Lancashire’s Fylde Coast features one of the finest stretches of sand dunes anywhere in England. From St Annes to Starr Gate these dynamic dune-systems, remnants of a once vast realm of sandy hills which stretched along this entire coast, are home to a myriad of flora and fauna, many of which have nowhere else to live.
Northern Shores: Ammophila arenaria, Aeolian Architect
Marram grass, Ammophila arenaria, also known as European beachgrass, is one of our most iconic and ecologically important maritime plant species. A tough, perennial grass it thrives in the harsh, windswept conditions of coastal sand dunes, where few other species can survive.
Northern Shores: Bladderwrack
Bladder wrack, Fucus vesiculosus, is a familiar sight to anyone who has wandered our coasts, a member of the brown algae family, it is easily identified by its flattened, leathery fronds that branch repeatedly in a dichotomous pattern, splitting evenly into two like a fork.
Northwest Nature and History 