This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the declaration of Teesmouth National Nature Reserve. For those who aren’t familiar with the site, arrive at Teesmouth and you know you’ve come to a Reserve like no other. But while power stations and other industrial sites may loom on the horizon, the Reserve is still home to an amazing array of flora and fauna.
Look out for common (harbour) and grey seals basking beside the tidal channels, rare plants including four different species of marsh orchid, and thousands of migratory waterbirds swooping down to feed on the mudflats.
The site contains two Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and the whole Reserve is part of the Teesmouth and Cleveland Special Protection Area and Ramsar site.
North Gare with Seal Sands industry on the horizon
The beginning:
For thousands of years, the sea swept across the Tees Estuary, washing the shoreline at high tide and exposing mudflats and sand bars as it ebbed. Local people, eager to find more land to farm, built defensive banks against the tides, changing the currents and the flow. Gradually, the ground became solid, lost its saltiness and became fit for agriculture.
Areas still covered by the sea at the highest tides developed as saltmarshes and here sheep grazed and grew the thick fleeces sold by medieval monks to much of Europe.
Outside the old sea defences, sand formed dunes, and today this process continues, with sand blown against the sea walls stabilising as grasses begin to take hold.
Today:
Teesmouth NNR is a Nature Reserve with a difference. Set against a backdrop of heavy industry, it shows how nature can adapt and thrive in the most unlikely of situations. Managed by Natural England, this coastal reserve covers over 350 hectares and has a rich range of habitats. It is split into two main sections:
North Gare is an area of dunes and grazing marsh north of the power station. During winter, this is the domain of lapwings and flocks of curlew, which stalk the pastures alongside the approach road. During the breeding season, the grasses help to conceal the nests of skylarks and meadow pipits.
Seal Sands is one of the largest areas of intertidal mudflats on England’s north-east coast. When the tide is out, hundreds of waders, including redshank and dunlin, peck through the mud looking for protein-rich invertebrates.
North Gare dunes provide habitat for a diversity of wildflowers.
Seasonal spectaculars
Of course, Teesmouth can be enjoyed at any time of year but there are also special reasons to pay a visit:
Spring and summer
Enjoy fantastic displays of wildflowers on the North Gare dunes.
Autumn
The best time to see the noisy aerobatics of common and sandwich terns.
Winter
Marvel at the swirling flocks of knots arriving from Greenland and the Canadian Arctic – this is the coastal equivalent of those great inland starling roosts. Several hundred handsome, brightly-coloured shelduck also spend the winter on Seal Sands.
Left: Shelduck. Right: Sandwich Tern with sand eel © Natural England/Allan Drewitt