Tag Archives: #Morecambe

Northern Shores: The Common Tern

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.

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.

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.

Gallinago the Bog Drummer

If you’ve ever stood in the reeds of Chat Moss, the wet sheep-pastures of the Ribble estuary, the peat-bogs of Bowland or the rushy fields around Martin Mere on a still April evening, you might have heard a weird, somewhat spooky, sound that you couldn’t quite put your finger on; a bleating, almost goat-like humming that seemed to come from the sky itself, and you may have wondered what made it.