Steve's Nature Blog: Flimby

Wednesday, 7 June 2023

England Coast Path - Flimby to Workington

Last week we walked the King Charles III England Coast Path from Maryport to Flimby. This week, I thought we'd continue along the path from Flimby to Workington. It's a beautiful sunny day for strolling by the Solway and everything is bursting into bloom. Eight new flowers this week including a few of my old favourites from my time in Crete, the Yellow-horned Poppy, Kidney Vetch and European Searocket.

The butterflies and moths are taking full advantage of nature's largesse. Look for the little yellow/green packets attached to grass stalks. These are the chrysalises of the Burnet Moth, a black day flying moth with red spots (not to be confused with the Cinnabar Moth which is a black day flying moth with red spots and stripes, like this one here). There's a Small Tortoiseshell over there. Their caterpillars feed on nettles but I haven't seen any this year, have you? We saw some Common Blues last week and today there are quite a few Small Blues about. They're unmistakably smaller and grey/black with white borders. Finally some Large Skippers. Skippers have a family all to themselves, the Hesperiidae.

The Lepidoptera are not the only ones taking advantage of the flowers, so are the bees. However the bee over there on the Bloody Cranesbill is an imposter. It's actually a hover fly doing a very good impression of a bumble bee. Flies only have one pair of wings, whereas all other winged insects have two pairs. This is not always easy to see, neither is the fact that flies have compound eyes and bees don't. I find that the easiest way to tell a bee from a fly mimic is to look at the antennae. All flies have very short antennae, whereas a bee's antennae are much more robust.

The path dips down onto the shore here, so let's see who's about in the bird world. A nice flight of Sanderlings for a start, and further out, a flight of Black-headed Gulls. Last week I introduced you to the Passerines, perching birds, including the Stonechats, Linnets and Starlings that we've just left behind us. This week, I'll introduce you to the Charadriiformes, or shorebirds. This group includes nearly all of the small to medium/large birds that you see around our coasts, including the Sanderlings and Gulls as well as the Ringed Plover and Dunlin that are pootling about in the shallows here.

One of the great bonuses of the Cumbrian section of the England Coast Path, is that the west coast railway line follows the same course. This means that we don't have to walk all the way back. We can hop on the train at Workington and admire the scenery from a different vantage point on our way back to Flimby. Meanwhile, there's a nice pile of rocks ahead where we can sit and rest awhile. We'll be sharing them with a number of mobile red dots, which, on closer inspection, are a group of mites (I think these are Whirligig mites). Although mites have eight legs, they are not spiders. On the whole, these are harmless little arachnids, although the Varroa Mite is the curse of beekeepers, and the Itch Mite (Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis) is the little devil that transmits scabies. Rest assured, these are neither of them.

And so we reach Workington, where the River Derwent flows serenely down to the port. I must confess, being a southern softie, that the name 'Workington' always conjured up images of a gritty, industrial, northern town. Nothing could be further from the truth. The 'working' in Workington has nothing to do with labour. The name is mediaeval and means simply the town or settlement of Weorc or Wirc's people. As you can see, it's actually quite a beautiful place and there are even fish in the river. Some quite good sized Mullet down there, if you fancy a spot of fishing.

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Wednesday, 31 May 2023

England Coast Path - Maryport to Flimby

We are very fortunate in that the England Coast Path now covers virtually all of the Cumbrian coastline. You can walk from Green Road Station in the south of the county to Allonby in the north, a distance of around seventy miles. A lovely week's walking holiday, if you fancy it. Today we're going to start at Maryport pier and walk south to Flimby, about two and a quarter miles. Right at the start of the walk, on the shingle beach next to the pier, an Oystercatcher has chosen to nest.

There are plenty of other birds about such as these Whitethroats, Dunnocks and Linnets. These are all passerines, or perching birds (Order: Passeriformes). This is a very large order of birds, all of which have three toes facing forward and one toe facing backwards. The perfect arrangement for clinging on to long, thin branches, swaying in the wind.

It's a botanist's paradise along here. We have Northern Marsh Orchids, Wild Mignonette (a source of the yellow dye called weld), and down on the beach, some Sea Kale. The forced, blanched shoots of this plant used to be a highly expensive Victorian delicacy. The leaves are good as well, so I think we'll gather a few for us tea tonight (us tea = dinner northern dialect). There are a couple of other useful plants up here too: Ribwort Plantain and Comfrey. Both can be applied to the skin to relieve bites and stings, although comfrey is better known for using as a poultice to promote the healing of broken bones (it's old English name was knit-bone). As it happens, we can do a little experiment. Ishbel was stung by one of her bees yesterday, so we can use her as a guinea pig. (I like to live dangerously). The verdict? Both work, but comfrey is the more efficacious.

The flowers attract the butterflies, of course, including the Common Blue that we saw last week down at Drigg. This week, we've a chance to study them in a bit more detail. As you can see, the female (on the left) is very different to the male (on the right), but the markings on the underwing are the same. Unfortunately the Common Blue is not as common as it used to be. One of the reasons for this being the massive reduction in it's preferred host plant (Bird's Foot Trefoil, which you can see them feeding on here) due to habitat loss. There are also some Green-veined Whites about, which for some reason, seem to be more prevalent than the ubiquitous Small White this year. Finally, we have some very small, pale moths drifting about. These are Grass Rivulets who's larvae feed on the seeds of Yellow Rattle.

Here we are, down at Flimby, and there are some fabulous rock pools about. Unfortunately we don't have time to investigate them now as the tide's coming in. Just a note on the tides here on The Solway Firth: they are big (4-5m on average), quick, and have a disconcerting habit of coming in behind you. So, I think we'll make our way back to land while we can still do so without getting our feet wet. Come on Mattie! Before you have to swim for shore.

Steve's Vintage Collectables. (click to visit)

Although you can simply boil Sea-kale as a vegetable, if you're feeling a bit more creative, here's a recipe from Mrs. Beeton's 1930s edition of her Household Management, This is just one of the books in the Beautiful Books Collection at SVCwithEtsy.