Stunning sunset over Marshside lake at Southport in Merseyside, United Kingdom,
Located on the Ribble Estuary, Marshside is one of the RSPB's newest nature reserves. It was leased from Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council in 1994. The cows that graze the marshes in summer create conditions that are attractive to birds all the year round. Lapwings, golden plovers and the rarer blacktailed godwits and ruffs find their food more easily on the close-cropped turf. In winter, thousands of wildfowl arrive to graze the short marsh grasses. The Ribble Estuary is the most important site in Britain for the wigeon, a winter visitor that nests in Russia and Scandinavia. Over 100,000 may be present on the estuary, with up to 10,000 of these at Marshside. Wigeon are the only ducks to feed almost entirely on grass during the winter months, selecting the shorter, finer grasses. The grassland becomes wet and usually floods in winter. The shallow floods attract a great variety of waterfowl, including teal and shoveler. The pink-footed geese, which nest in Iceland, prefer to graze the drier grassland and also visit the mosses inland. South-west Lancashire may hold a fifth of the world population during the winter. The areas of the nature reserve that are too wet for cattle to graze have developed into either freshwater swamp with reedbeds, or small areas of saltmarsh. In summer the reedbeds have reed buntings and reed warblers, and marsh orchids grow around the edges. The whole of the estuary - including Marshside - is protected under European law as a Special ProtectionArea (SPA) and internationally recognised as an important site for wintering wildfowl, ducks and waders under the Ramsar Convention. Much of the estuary is also protected within the Ribble Estuary National Nature Reserve which is managed by English Nature. Huge flocks of wading birds visit the mudflats on migration or spend the winter there. Some of these birds visit the reserve to roost when particularly high tides cover their feeding areas. Wading birds such as oystercatcher, dunlin, san
Size: 5050px × 3366px
Location: Southport, UK
Photo credit: © EnVogue_Photo / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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