South Walney with Brent Geese and Knot

Vista with Piel Castle

A landscape of sparkling frost with New Year's Eve floodwaters now gleaming ice.  Minus 2 degrees as we cross  Jubilee Bridge onto South Walney.  The track from Coastguard Cottages is floodwater and ice.  On a cold, calm and bright day at New Year the saltmarsh looks wonderful, its rich reds threaded with pools and shallows of ice-blue,  deep blue in the deeps of Piel Channel.  Piel Castle always the focal point.   A faint call of curlew, and redshank.  South Walney in winter can be a wildlife spectacle so what might the day bring. 

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 A sprig of sea-lavender is a memento of our visit  in July 2023 when flowers coloured the salt-marsh.  A colony of Sandwich Tern was shrill and we came upon Eider.   Reflecting on that summer's day, I wonder what we might discover at New Year..(link to July 2023)    
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In autumn and winter South Walney attracts flocks of waders. Finding them requires patience and field-craft. This is tidal salt-marsh and tides determine when and where birds will be.  We reach the hide to see geese feeding on the water's edge. They're light-bellied  Brent Geese over-wintering here.  I last saw them at Loch Ryan, Stranraer.  The hide looks east and the low sun is in the south so illumination enhances but does not define them.  Head and neck are dark and the mantle resembles a dark cape tied beneath the pale belly.   Thrilling to find Brent Geese at New Year.  The light plays on them as they swim, showing them bright and dark by turns.
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In a wildlife spectacular a swirling flock of waders flies in  and settles  to feed along the shoreline, at the water's edge.   Both Brent Geese and the new arrivals feed on a rapidly in-coming tide that will submerge shoals and  bands of seaweed and wrack.  A flow tide stirs up sediments and marine life, bringing a nutritious banquet for  birds pushed toward us and gathered close by the tide. For optimum bird photography, we need the sun behind us. Impossible from this hide but a low sun and an oblique angle illuminates the birds in a way I find pleasing. 
The new arrivals are Knot, a winter visitor from Iceland, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic- their summer breeding grounds.  Salt marsh is an important eco-system and South Walney's mud-flats, coastal salt marsh, seaweed and wrack make ideal feeding grounds.  Knot are waders that feed on small invertebrates, like worms and molluscs.   
Counting large flocks is a skill that takes practice.  On 17th December 2024 South Walney Bird Observatory recorded 400 light-bellied Brent Geese and a flock of 3,364 Knot. 

As  the tide streams in a couple of Oystercatcher stand on the water's edge as Knot scurry to and fro, feeding and running from the tide which pushes them closer toward us.  The tide laps their feeding-ground and flushes the flock which swirls to and fro, settles briefly, takes wing and comes down farther off on the shingle shore where a flock of Oystercatcher roosts.   Feeding-ground flooded, Knot roost through high-tide. They huddle together turned away from the water and toward the larger Oystercatcher, the two species close but in distinct bands. 
A couple of hours after high-tide birds will feed on newly-exposed feeding zones, dispersing as the tide recedes, further and further from the shore.   

From Groyne Hide we look out toward the spit where grey seals bask, some swimming off the point.  They  resemble  boulders, until one moves.   
The highlight of the day is the interlude with Brent Geese and Knot, the swirling flocks.  Completing a circuit,  we look out across the salt-marsh toward Piel Castle.  All is brilliantly lit, two curlew frame the castle and we come home with an image of a Curlew in flight.  

We head home through Barrow and along the coast road, pausing at Ulverston Sands to look out across the estuary.  On an ebb-tide waders will disperse and scatter, farther and farther from the shore. 
What a glorious day on South Walney!