Ghostly little egrets and art deco mergansers

Ghostly little egrets and art deco mergansers

he final meanderings of the River Kent cut jigsaw pieces out of the low-lying farmland at the northern perimeter of Morecambe Bay. The fields were created centuries ago from deposits of peat, silt and sand, and by ditching. Turfed flood banking extends from beyond Foulshaw Moss in the west and as far as the outfall of the river Bela to the east.

On a recent walk sleek grey cloud defined the early morning views – the great limestone prow of Whitbarrow, Levens church steeple, the last of the Forestry Commission shelterbelt trees by Foulshaw Moss, a handful of farm buildings. The footpath along the two-metre high bank allowed an elevated view of the river and fields but alerted feeding birds to our presence.

The first to take flight was a little egret, followed by another, their white forms ghosting across the river towards Sampool, where a third stood immobile on the exposed sand flats. Fifteen years ago an egret here would have had twitchers’ pulses racing. These days there are scores of them throughout the bay area and they’ve been around long enough to be considered local.

Singleton curlew made looping patrols wide of the river. The next to rise were the lapwings, 80 or so, calling their joyous rolling gossip as they oared their way from Hallforth land to Levens Moss. In their midst were starlings. Any day now these great northern European settlers will arrive in their thousands to find winter quarters and perform an aerial visual feast in murmuration over the bay.

By Marsh Farm we stopped in the relative cover of sedge and wild cabbage gone to seed. Deposited in the grass were the fresh intestinal remnants from a recent kill and, on the sandy river bank below the tracks of a single otter; if only we’d come earlier.

By Fishcarling Head the Kent starts to broaden in to the bay. Black-headed gulls loitered on the sands, squabbling, then a flight of mergansers winged upriver, the art deco white of their wing bars forming an after-image of their passing. Looking into the water I watched as the sun’s reflection materialised briefly from the clouds.

Karen Lloyd’s The Gathering Tide: Walking the Edgelands of Morecambe Bay is published by Saraband in January 2016