Snailing in Dumfries and Galloway

If you cross the border north of Carlisle, you’re probably heading for Glasgow, or beyond to the Highlands and Islands. Or you might turn west for the ferries to Northern Ireland from Stranraer or Cairnryan. Either way, like so many people, you will just pass through Dumfries and Galloway without stopping, thereby missing an attractive, and from the naturalist’s point of view, under-recorded part of Scotland.

Dumfries and Galloway is the most south-westerly part of Scotland (see maps), coming further south than Hartlepool on the east coast of County Durham, and as a result has a relatively mild climate. It comprises the former counties of Dumfriesshire in the east, and Wigtownshire in the west, with the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in between. From Portpatrick on the west coast, with views of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, it is some 80 miles to Dumfries, and going east from there to Langholm, near the eastern borders of the region, is about another 30 miles, so the whole distance from west to east is comparable to that from London to Bristol or London to Birmingham. From north to south the distances are shorter, and heading up Nithsdale from Dumfries to Sanquhar is about 25 miles, while Gretna to Moffat is over 30. However you look at it, is a big area.

The area is almost entirely rural, and apart from Dumfries (population 31,600), Stranraer (10,800) and Annan (8,300) there is nowhere with a population as large as 5,000. Smaller communities have had to specialise: Wigtown is Scotland’s national Book Town, and Castle Douglas markets itself as a Food Town, although the demand for runaway weddings at Gretna has dropped away. Along the Solway coast and extending up Nithsdale and Annandale is good agricultural land devoted mainly to dairying, but inland it is mountainous, with moorland and extensive conifer plantations, much favoured by Red Squirrels (Ratcliffe 2007), though unfavourable for molluscs. There are also many lochs in the region, especially around Lochmaben, where most of them are SSSIs; Carlingwark Loch at Castle Douglas, and the lochs at Castle Kennedy (figure 1) near Stranraer, are also notable. All contain good populations of freshwater molluscs. Much of the Solway coast is low-lying with both sandy (figure 2) and shingle (figure 3) beaches, some of the former being calcareous with dunes. The vegetated shingle beaches of the region have been the subject of special surveys during 2010 under the auspices of Buglife. One of the shingle beaches is noted for its colony of Vertigo angustior, which I understand is still flourishing. Mudflats extend far out into the Solway and at Luce Bay, but beware, for the tide comes in very fast over these vast expanses!

My first acquaintance with Dumfries and Galloway was back in 1976, on a family holiday with small children. My knowledge of conchology was then much more rudimentary than it is now, and I doubt if I added much to our knowledge of the area. Nevertheless, a glance at the Atlas (Kerney 1999) shows some surprising gaps even for some of the commoner species, and also a good number of records that are only pre-1965. Although much of the region is on acid soils unfavourable to molluscs, inadequate recording is almost certainly the main reason for many of these gaps. Indeed, when I started recording more seriously in Dumfries and Galloway a few years ago, it quickly became apparent that it was relatively easy to get new records, especially for recently introduced slugs such as Boettgerilla pallens, or recent segregates. Even so, it can be quite hard work finding molluscs in some of the older deciduous woods (figure 4), where the calcifuge snail Zonitoides excavatus is one of the regularly found species. As anywhere, however, disturbed habitats around settlements can provide rich rewards.

A weekend break at Gatehouse of Fleet in the autumn of 2006 showed that Arion flagellus (figure 5) and A. distinctus were present, both species that had hardly been recorded in the region. My wife and I enjoyed the weekend so much that we went back there the following spring for a whole week, which allowed much more snailing (as well as other activities!). We covered an area from Newton Stewart
in the west, down to Whithorn and Wigtown, and east to Castle Douglas and Kirkcudbright, and it soon became clear that Arion flagellus, A. distinctus and A. owenii were pretty widespread and common. B. pallens turned up in several places, as did Tandonia budapestensis and Deroceras panormitanum, the last two both common and widespread introduced species in Britain, but not much recorded hitherto in Dumfries and Galloway. Limax maculatus was found at Garlieston, a run-down little port near Wigtown, now enjoying a renaissance as a marina and resort. It was not all slugs, however. A popular place of pilgrimage is St Ninian’s Cave, on the south coast not far from Whithorn. The vegetation by the path leading through the wood to the beach turned out to harbour good populations of two Oxychilus species that are uncommon in Scotland: O. draparnaudi, for which the Atlas marks only one other site in Dumfries and Galloway (although I have subsequently found it at a number of places); and O. navarricus (figure 6), which has been recorded for only three other sites in the whole of Scotland.

Of course, other conchologists have visited Dumfries and Galloway in recent years, and a particularly notable find was Cochlicella barbara at Monreith in Kirkcudbrightshire (Norris 2009). The presence of this Mediterranean species here, far to the north of its other British sites in the south, is testament to the mild climate of the region, though one wonders if it can have survived the two recent hard winters. Balea heydeni, only recently recognised as a British species (Gittenberger et al. 2006), was also identified in Kirkcudbrightshire in 1997 (Norris, 2010), and I have subsequently found it at Glenluce near Stranraer.

It wasn’t until 2010 that I got down to Dumfries and Galloway again, encouraged by Mark Pollitt, who runs the local record centre (DGERC – Dumfries and Galloway Environmental Records Centre), and this time made several visits. Once again, common and widespread species of slugs that had only been rarely recorded in the region proved to be everywhere, from Stranraer in the west to Lockerbie in the east. A nice find was a single specimen of L. cinereoniger in a wood near Castle Douglas, apparently a new site for this scarce species. Rather surprisingly, I failed to find any of the much commoner L. maximus in 2010, although I had seen several in 2007. Further west, the “greenhouse” slug Lehmannia valentiana turned up at Drummore, the southernmost village in Scotland (figure 7), and a few weeks later at Glenwhan Gardens near Dunragit, a few miles east of Stranraer. The recent spread of this supposedly delicate slug is quite extraordinary. At Glenwhan it could potentially have been imported with plants when this garden was created in recent years. The isolated population of the Great Ramshorn Snail, Planorbarius corneus, could well have arrived in the same way. At Drummore (figure 8), on a vegetated shingle beach, was a large population of Cernuella virgata, apparently isolated by many miles from the next population. It had rained overnight and the ground was still very damp, and thousands of these snails were active.

It is always exciting to find the rare or unusual species, and Dumfries and Galloway certainly has these. But what has impressed me is the ease with which one can get new records; since 2006, of the 500 or so records of molluscs I have obtained, about two-fifths have turned out, by comparison with the Atlas, to be new to their respective 10- kilometre squares. This seems an extraordinarily high proportion, and a clear indication that the region is desperately under-recorded. The Society plans to start to remedy this in May 2011, when a field meeting is to be held in the region. On Day 1 it is hoped to visit some ancient woodlands that are also SSSIs in the Nithsdale area, not far from Thornhill and Moniaive. These woods are on base-rich soils, unusual in the region, and so we expect to find a particularly rich molluscan fauna there. The following day we plan to head towards the easternmost extremities of Dumfries and Galloway, first visiting Penton Linns near Canonbie. This site is notified for its fossil-bearing limestone, but once again should be rich in living molluscs. We end the weekend with a visit to Langholm, a bit further north, where riverside woods should provide much of interest.

When I used to attend international conferences, it was usual to provide a programme for accompanying persons, and although we are not planning any such events, there is plenty to see in the area for the non-conchologist: near Thornhill there is Drumlanrig Castle (http://www.drumlanrig.com/), which is one of Scotland’s great country houses, belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, while around Langholm (the “Muckle Toon”) are many walks, and archaeological and historical remains, as well as a Tibetan monastery nearby (http://www.langholm-online.co.uk.). So why not bring a spouse, partner or friend with you and make a weekend of it!

_{map 1: Map of Scotland, showing the position of Dumfries and Galloway (black).}

_{map 2: Map of Dumfries and Galloway, with principal places marked: C, Castle Douglas; D, Dumfries; G, Gatehouse of Fleet; K, Kirkcudbright; L, Langholm; N, Newton Stewart; S, Stranraer; T, Thornhill; W, Whithorn.}

_{figure 1: White Loch at Castle Kennedy, near Stranraer.}

_{figure 2: Sandy beach at Port Logan on the west coast. The dunes here are home to Cochlicella acuta.}

_{figure 3: Vegetated shingle beach at Balcarry Bay, Wigtownshire.}

_{figure 4: Dunskey Glen, a wooded valley near Portpatrick on the west coast.}

_{figure 5: Arion flagellus}

_{Figure 6: Oxychilus navarricus from Physigill Glen, on the coast south of Whithorn. (shell size: 8-10mm)}

_{figure 8: Drummore, south of Stranraer, the most southerly village in Scotland.}