Category Archives: mud-shrimps

‘Saltmarsh writing workshop’ – some words and images

Posted on September 18, 2022 by solwayshorewalker

The RSPB’s Campfield Reserve near Bowness on the Upper Solway is a perfect place for a writing workshop, especially if you want to ‘experience’, think about, and write about saltmarshes; they form a land- and sea-scape that most people probably … Continue reading →

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The charisma of Corophium, the mudshrimp

Posted on July 18, 2022 by solwayshorewalker

Snowdrifts! Small semicircles and rippling lines of white on the grass of the saltmarsh: the cast exoskeletons of thousands of mudshrimps. My friend and former colleague Professor Geoff Moore (himself an expert on amphipod crustaceans including Corophium) once told me … Continue reading →

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Strange animals of the Solway shore

Posted on January 24, 2022 by solwayshorewalker

This is a resumé of a short talk I gave at Bowness-on-Solway on Saturday 22nd January, as part of the event that launched the ‘Hadrian’s Wall 1900’ celebrations. I’m posting it here because some of the audience wanted to know … Continue reading →

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The fog and the froth

Posted on September 21, 2021 by solwayshorewalker

Diffuse, pale light glimmers and shifts with the fog above Skinburness saltmarsh. Two crows call harshly and fly swiftly towards a broad-winged shape, a buzzard, who slants his wings and flaps away, fading and disappearing into the whiteness. Along the … Continue reading →

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Snippet 14: Long-lost piddocks and the peat

Posted on May 16, 2021 by solwayshorewalker

The shore at Beckfoot, on a sunny, windy day in May: the Solway is a churned, pale brown, and a wavering white line far off in the Firth marks where the incoming tide is beating against a sandbank. Towards the … Continue reading →

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The acronyms’ stories: imagine.

Posted on June 11, 2020 by solwayshorewalker

‘Alphabet soup’: AONB, EMS, MPA, MCZ, NNR, SAC, SPA, SSSI – how many more of these acronyms for conservation designations can you recall? Do you know what they mean? (If you don’t – and not many people do – you … Continue reading →

Posted in conservation, Marine Conservation Zone, mud-shrimps, peat, bogs and moors, saltmarshes, wetlands | Tagged , | Comments Off on The acronyms’ stories: imagine.