Welsh Coastal Flora and Fauna

[pameladlloyd]

I have been researching the wildlife, both animal and plant, that might be found in Welsh coastal areas. In the process, I've come across some truly gorgeous photography. One of the best sites is A Picture of Gower.

Since I'm not interested in a specific location, but more in the general types of things that might be found on the coast (although I've mostly focused on the Gower peninsula), my current lists (which are in no particular order and I'm sure are very incomplete) include:


Sea Mammals

• seals and great seals


• bottle-nosed, common, and Risso dolphins

Things Found in Tidepools

• baby sole


• baby plaice


• weeverfish


• rays


• turbot


• brill


• barnacles


• crabs


• dog whelks


• kelp


• limpets


• sea anemones, including plumose anemones


• winkles


• wrack


• mussels


• starfish, including cushion starfish


• lobsters

Plants of the Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes

• sea spurge


• sea holly


• eel grass


• glasswort


• sea plantain

Birds

• kittiwakes (they look a bit like a gull, have a round head, and are white with dark gray or black wing tips


• choughs (a kind of crow)


• auks


• puffins


• shags


• fulmars


• oystercatchers


• plus, various "waders and ducks"

Freshwater River Denizens

• otters


• eels

Insects, Spiders and Other Creepy-Crawlies

• demoiselle (a kind of dragonfly)


• strand-line beetles


• "a recently discovered British spider named after Gower (Lasiargus gowerensis)" See reference at Gower Peninsula Holiday Guide: Insect Life


• bloody-nosed beetles (so named because, when frightened, they release a red substance that looks like blood)


• great green bush crickets

Misc Flowers, Plants, and Trees

• scarlet pimpernel


• pink thrift


• foxglove


• snowdrops (in January)


• Carline thistle


• Yew (tree)


• Ash (tree)


• cleavers, aka goosegrass


• greater stitchwort, aka pixie, due to its association with the creatures of faerie


• cowslip, aka buckles, key flower, Mayflower, paigles, palsywort, petty mulleins, plumrocks, fairycup, and more (Per Gower Peninsula Holiday Guide: Gower Plants: "The flowers are also supposed to be the keys which reveal and unlock fairy treasure."

See Gower Peninsula Holiday Guide: Gower Plants for information about most of these flowers.


Miscellaneous

• badgers

I think the most fun was the information on the "culinary delicacies" of Gower (which appear to be the kinds of simple, local foods people would have prepared in this environment):

Cockles are just one of many Gower's culinary delicacies: others are laverbread (cooked seaweed; delicious with cockles and oatmeal) sewin (sea trout) mushrooms (ceps and blewits) salt-marsh lamb, gulls' eggs, marsh samphire and shellfish....

Source: Gower - Outstanding Natural Beauty

For more information about laverbread, see the Wikipedia entry for Laverbread.

Comments

[sianikatt.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for visiting my blog, A Picture of Gower. I appreciate the kind comments and the link.

If you need any more info about the local flora and fauna, check out http://www.welcometogower.co.uk. I know Chris, the author of that site. He's a very knowledgeable guy and has a lot of useful flora and fauna info there. His wife, Stella, also has a lot of useful info on her site, http://www.explore-gower.co.uk/, which is temporarily down for maintenance. I also have some pics of local flora and fauna on my main blog, http://sianiworld.co.uk. As it's a big blog, I'd be happy to hunt down the relevant post URLs for you.

Once again, many thanks. It's nice to meet you here in cyberspace.

Siani.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, and thank you, Siani! I've just spent a couple of hours reading a few of Chris' posts about the myths and legends of Gower. Fascinating, wonderful stuff.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I've been wandering around Chris' site and found the following post: Gower Wildlife (http://www.welcometogower.co.uk/search/label/Wildlife), which not only describes the wildlife under categories similar to mine, but has pictures! I highly recommend the entire site, btw, to anyone interested in the folklore of the area, as well as for the info on flora and fauna that Sianikatt mentioned.