Opening Times

The reserve is open daily from 10.00am - 5.00pm (4.00pm in winter). 

What to expect on the nature reserve: habitat, wildlife and more (hover over an icon for more info)

Seasonal highlights on the nature reserve 

Spring		Birds: courting eider duck, spring migrants, wheatear, willow warbler, sandwich tern Plants: flowering thrift and sea campion, Butterflies: common blue butterfly
Summer		Birds: gull and eider ducks, nesting oystercatcher and ringed plover.   Butterflies and moths: burnet moths and grayling butterfly. Plants: Shingle flora including viper’s bugloss, yellow horned poppy and henbane. Flowering sea lavender, heartsease pansy. Orchids: pyramidal orchid
Autumn		Birds: migratory birds including curlew snapper, spotted redshank, redstart, wheatear, and pink footed geese. Plants: flowering sea lavender and sea aster.
Winter		Birds: High tide roost of wader and wildfowl including knot, dunlin, grey plover and oystercatcher. Barn owl and short-eared owl, pergrine and merlin twite, feeding on salt marsh.
All year		Birds: oystercatcher, large gull roosts/breeding colony. birds of prey Mammals: grey seals at high tide General: Amazing views across three counties and across the sea to the isle of man

Overview 

South Walney forms the southern tip of a shingle island lying at the end of the Furness Peninsula. During the medieval period it was farmed by the monks of Furness Abbey, whilst during the 19th and 20th centuries salt, sand and gravel were extracted leaving large lagoons and some industrial remains.

What to see

Every spring, large numbers of lesser black backed and herring gulls still return and begin to set up nest territories. Other breeding birds include eider duck, greater black backed gull, shelduck, oystercatcher, mallard, moorhen and coot. Of the 250 bird species recorded, most are passage migrants on their way to or from breeding grounds. These include common species such as wheatear, redstart, willow warbler and gold crest, as well as more unusual species, which may have been blown off their normal migration route. In winter, large numbers of waders and wildfowl feed and roost around the nature reserve both on the gravel pools and the intertidal areas. Vegetated shingle being a highly unusual habitat, and yellow horned poppy, sea campion and biting stonecrop grow on the single beaches. 

Small areas of dune grassland survive with pyramidal orchid, Portland spurge, restharrow and wild pansy. The old gravel workings have developed their own communities with striking plants such as viper's bugloss, henbane and alkanet. Saltmarsh occurs in Lighthouse Bay with species such as thrift, glasswort and sea purslane.

Recent History

South Walney has been leased from Holker Estates since 1963.