Description
Ards Forest Park, Creeslough, Sheephaven Bay, County Donegal, Ireland
Ards salt marsh is a transition area between land and sea. The science behind salt marshes is that freshwater flows through rivers and estuaries where it finally meets the much different salt water of the ocean. This sudden mixture of different waters causes a small reaction and the water in these areas are known as ‘brackish water’.
Sometimes this brackish water carves its way through sandy silt areas of lowlands on the shore. These areas then become known as salt marshes which are unique habitats for many forms of wildlife such as dragonflies, frogs, wading birds and especially those pestering midges!
What fascinates me about this salt marsh is how these small estuaries of water slowly carve and meander their way through these delicate sand banks of land. They curve in such bendy patterns surrounded by green sea grass and mossy plants. In my mind’s eye it looks like I’m looking down on the rivers of the amazonian rainforest or the wetlands in Kenya We have the exotic all right here though…. in a Donegal swampland