Bowness-on-Solway

I was in north Cumbria today, so took the opportunity to have a drive along the coast near Bowness-on-Solway. I saw one large, fairly distant flock of Barnacle Geese and several small flocks which were much closer. There were also plenty of Redshanks and Curlew, and wildfowl included Wigeon, Teal and Shelduck.

Year 96


Barnacle Geese near Cardurnock.



I was delighted to see this white Barnacle so close. It brought back memories of November 1986, when my friend Johnny Warren and I stayed for a few days with the then NCC Warden Wally Wright, who lived in a cottage on the Scottish side of the Solway. We knew Wally from his time on St Kilda. As you can imagine, staying with the warden of the reserve, who was a local and an ex-wildfowler made for a very interesting few days.

Of particular intertest here though is the comment I made in my note book from 23rd November 1986, when we saw what I took care to describe as a "white phase" Barnacle (rather than alibino or leucistic) with the Barnies at Caerlaverock:

"The white phase Barnacles don't appear to be true albinos (they have black eyes and black barring on their backs). Wally told us that there have been white Barnacles on the Solway for years, and that they are all believed to belong to the same family, and the white is genetic."

In other words, they are not albino and at the time we didn't believe that they were leucistic either. Even back in 1986 I was familiar with leucistic birds, notably amongst the Pink-foot flocks on the mosslands. In my experience leucistic birds looked like washed out versions of normal birds, to varying degrees, but their white bits were never as pure white as they are on the bird in the photo, they were more of a creamy colour.

Of course that comment from Wally was 26 years ago, and the science may have moved on a bit since then. Perhaps there are other theories now, and maybe this is just a leucistic bird after all, but fascinating from my point of view to think that the bird in the photo may be a descendant of that bird I saw way back in 1986!

I notice that Wally is now an MBE and the author of a book entitled "Wildfowlers and Fishermen on the Solway Coast: From Old Photographs". Sounds interesting.