Picture of the month
August 2016
This year's family
Comment:
The 2016 family of four cygnets are seen with 'mum' at the north end of Urswick Tarn. One pair of adult swans are continuing to breed successfully on this marl tarn each year despite the dramatic and, as yet, unexplained decline of other species of water fowl, most significant of which is the coot. The tarn has been nominally owned by Urswick Parish Council, on behalf of parishioners, since 1 September 1948 when it was purchased from The Holker Estate Company on the first part, Richard Edward Osborne Cavendish of the second part, and Chatsworth Estates Company of the third part, for £250. Now unseen at the bottom of this tarn is a deep deposit of haematite effluent sediments which were permitted to be brought via a constructed drain from the haematite mines around Lindal in Furness during the second half of the nineteenth century. Investigations relating to toxins in those sediments continues.