Either Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep again or this colourful couple have missed the train to the Latitude Festival. Last seen looking sheepish outside a shop on the first floor at Waterloo Station in London.
Waterloo Sheep
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Tag Archives: sheep
Show Sheep
Who knew there were so many breeds of sheep? All these sheep portraits were photographed at Dorset County Show in England 2014. They seemed delighted to pose for the camera – not at all sheepish!
Beached bones – sheep
Bones turn up on the beach from time to time. They are not always from specifically marine animals. Sheep that graze the salt marshes or cliff tops sometimes come to grief and their remains find their way to the seashore. Occasionally on Gower beaches you can see dead sheep but most frequently it is the bones that are obvious on the sandy strandlines or grassy saltmarsh borders.
COPYRIGHT JESSICA WINDER 2012
All Rights Reserved
Saltmarsh sheep at Whiteford
Landimore Marsh, The Groose, and Cwm Ivy Marsh lie to the east of Whiteford National Nature Reserve in Gower, South Wales. If you are able to look down on this area from Llanmadoc Hill, you can see an amazing dendritic pattern of channels draining the land into Burry Pill, which in turn feeds in to the River Loughor and estuary.
When the tide is way out, spectacular vast expanses of sand and mud flat are exposed. The river narrows to such an extent in places that local fishermen are able to cross over the mud flats to and fro Llanrhidian.
When the tide comes in, the channels of the salt-marsh begin to flood. At very high tides, the channels overflow and the entire marsh is covered with sea water right up to the man-made causeway that separates The Groose from Cwm Ivy Marsh.
The saltmarshes are grazed by herds of wild Gower ponies and flocks of sheep. The sheep which feed here on the luxuriant and abundant herbiage are reknowned for the distinctive flavour of their meat. However, the incoming seawater can prove a problem for the flocks. While the ponies can simply keep moving ahead of the flowing tide if they wish, sheep are less certain of their response and tend to just stand still with the water running around them.
When I visited in late June on a warm misty morning, there had been one of these high tides. It was in the process of ebbing. Great flocks of sea birds, small clusters of ponies, and scattered groups and individual sheep were standing still on recently exposed hummocks of land or actually in the water.
The top picture shows sheep on the flooded salt-marsh with their reflections in the calm glassy water. The picture below has three dry-footed sheep peering out from the flag leaves and meadowsweet flowers at the edge of the marsh while in the background the rest of the flock are scattered across wetter ground. And in the final picture below, four sheep definitely have got wet feet – it looks as though they have been patiently standing still as the tide flowed in and ebbed out around their legs.
COPYRIGHT JESSICA WINDER 2013
All Rights Reserved
