Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
enough to settle, it lasts no longer than a day or two. Rain is a different matter, however, and Swansea is
reputed to have a higher rainfall than Manchester. As a local saying goes, 'If you can see Mumbles light-
house, it is going to rain. If you can't see it, it is raining.' Despite this the peninsula, and indeed South
Wales as a whole, has a high number of recorded sunshine hours in comparison with the rest of Britain,
with the best sunshine in May and June.
FIG
4.
Fordson tractor in a ploughing match at Burry Hill Farm. (Harold Grenfell)
the author for Figures
As a result of all these factors the peninsula is unique in terms of the variety of habitats and species
that occur in and around its relatively small boundary. Along with an extensive list of plants there are
'attractive insects like butterflies and bumble bees … song birds in the hedges and woods, skylarks rising
above the fields, seagulls androoksfollowing the tractor andwintering flocks ofstarlings, seagulls, field-
fares and redwings wheeling against the sky' (Kay 1997a). The inlet and estuary in particular, the largest
wholly within Wales, is one of the country's great wildlife spectacles, especially in winter when large
flocks of overwintering birds sweep across the area. The commons too are rich in wildlife and are partic-
ularly important for invertebrates (Fig. 5). Many of the species described in this topic, however, are not
immediatelyobviousandnaturalistsvisitingforadaywillhaveonlyabriefglimpseofwhatthepeninsula
has to offer.
To Horatio Tucker, one of the most eloquent chroniclers of Gower in the first half of the twentieth
century, the apparently unchanging natural world of the peninsula was a source of great comfort. He was
a man who as he walked along the cliffs was able to give a 'continuous commentary' on what he passed,
'the common andscientific names ofplants, the identification offungi,the little cliffbutterflies, the types
of cloud, the rock formations, birds.' In
Gower Gleanings
(1951) Tucker writes:
The villages, the churches, and the castles now studding the countryside, are but transient; the
things not made with hands will endure.
