| Levington Lagoon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Nature reserve |
| Location | Levington, Suffolk |
| OS grid | TM238389 |
| Area | 5 hectares |
| Managed by | Suffolk Wildlife Trust |
Levington Lagoon is a 5 hectare nature reserve south-east of Levington in Suffolk. It is owned by Suffolk Yacht Harbour Ltd and managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. [1]
Levington is a small village in the Suffolk Coastal district, in the county of Suffolk, England. The population of the parish including Stratton Hall at the 2011 Census was 259.
Suffolk is an East Anglian county of historic origin in England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowestoft, Bury St Edmunds, Newmarket and Felixstowe, one of the largest container ports in Europe.
Suffolk Wildlife Trust (SWT) describes itself as the county's "nature charity – the only organisation dedicated wholly to safeguarding Suffolk's wildlife and countryside." It is a registered charity, and its headquarters is at Brooke House in Ashbocking, near Ipswich. It was founded in 1961, and is one of 47 wildlife trusts covering the Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As of March 2017, it has 13,200 members, and it manages 3,120 hectares of land in 60 nature reserves, most of which are open to the public. It had an income of £3.9 million in the year to 31 March 2017.
This area of open water and saltmarsh on the bank of the River Orwell was formed when the sea wall was breached during the North Sea flood of 1953. The birds are diverse, including greenshanks, dunlins, spotted redshanks, pipits and dunlins. There are plants such as sea lavender. [1]
The River Orwell flows through the county of Suffolk in England. Its source river, above the tidal limit at Stoke Bridge, is known as the River Gipping. It broadens into an estuary at Ipswich where the Ipswich dock has operated since the 7th century and then flows into the North Sea at Felixstowe the UK's largest container port after joining with the River Stour at Shotley forming Harwich harbour.
The 1953 North Sea flood was a major flood caused by a heavy storm that occurred on the night of Saturday, 31 January 1953 and morning of Sunday, 1 February 1953. The floods struck the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Scotland.
The dunlin is a small wader, sometimes separated with the other "stints" in Erolia. The English name is a dialect form of "dunling", first recorded in 1531–2. It derives from dun, "dull brown", with the suffix -ling, meaning a person or thing with the given quality. The genus name is from Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a term used by Aristotle for some grey-coloured waterside birds. The specific alpina is from Latin and means "of high mountains", in this case referring to the Alps.
There is no public access to the site but it can be viewed from the Stour and Orwell Walk.
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