So that's it, 2020 is officially done. And thank f*ck for that, I imagine a great many people will be saying. I reckon that I've gotten away very lightly with the whole covid thing, there are definitely worse places to be locked down than on the beautiful Trotternish Peninsular. A well-stocked shop and my beloved Uig Wood are both just a few minutes walk down the hill, my job remains fundamentally secure and I have buzzards, ravens and the occasional eagle overhead. Yep, there are definitely worse places to live and circumstances in which to find oneself. I'm very glad I no longer live in South London, covid or otherwise.
Skye has escaped the coronavirus largely unscathed - one very notable exception being a nursing home which decided to draft in extra staff from Glasgow, quickly resulting in several elderly residents dying from it. In hindsight, possibly not the greatest managerial decision ever taken. For myself, I know one guy in Sussex who died of/with covid in the early days of it arriving in Britain, though his sons are fighting it being registered as the cause of death on his certificate, seeing as he was already seriously unwell and about to die anyway. And I lost a good friend just a few months back, he committed suicide due to various changes of circumstance brought about due to the coronavirus. I miss both of these men, and it saddens me that I never said goodbye to either of them. But in the grand scheme of things, I know that 2020 could have been a lot worse for me than it actually was. I have the natural world to help keep me sane, a fact that has only become increasingly clear to me over the course of the last few months. I've written more on that elsewhere.
I'm resisting the urge to compose the traditional 'end of year round up' thing that all wildlife bloggers seem compelled to do. Frankly I'm too knackered and frazzled to bother, and far too keen to make a start on the 2021 craziness that I've been planning for weeks now. 2020 is behind us, probably a good thing too, and I'm looking ahead now.
That's right, dear reader. I have a new Challenge for 2021 and a new Blog to document the adventures and mishaps I encounter along the way. I shall of course be keeping this Skye's the Limit blog going too, it's been running for slightly over four years now and I've no plans to either ditch it or stop adding to it.
If you look at the tabs below the banner pic at the top of this page, you'll notice there's one that says 2021 Challenge. Click on that and you shall be magically transported to the new Blog. Who knows what you may find there...
Right, I'm gonna try and get my head down (don't ask!) for a couple of hours before it all kicks off. Have a great New Year everybody, fingers crossed this bastard covid does one sometime soon and we can start rebuilding a semblance of normality once more.
Random pic of a place I like. This is Loch Cill Chriosd, site of the immature Moorhen I successfully twitched a few weeks back. It's the first one to be reported on Skye since I moved here. Had to be done.
I woke up to the noise of banging at around 6am. It was Tiny, presumably packing his rucksack ready for the off. So much for his 5am stomp, I thought. After he'd drained the coffee maker (twice), he eventually quit the cottage by about 6:30am. Fairplay to him, I remember being excited at the prospect of seeing my first Richard's Pipit too. Mind you, I had one calling right over my tent here on The Garrison some years back, which saw me explode out of my sleeping bag pretty damn sharp! It was strutting around on the football pitch when I found it, very smart birds indeed and I hoped he'd see the Porth Hellick bird today.
I was essentially packed already, as was The Ghost, so we dropped our bags in the collection area and did a quick bit of cleaning up Tiny's spilled coffee and breakfast mess before waving adios to Cedar Cottage and heading out for our final morning on Scilly. We found a yellow and white flowered Greater Snapdragon in an alleyway gutter, not a lifer for either of us but nice to see all the same, before parting company just outside Hugh Town. We agreed to rendezvous at the Old Town Bay/Tolmans Point area late morning - eek, the brotherhood were now entirely split up for the first time since arriving, scary times!
I strode my way up Rocky Hill Lane, finding a Yellow-browed Warbler near the Kangaroo-fern patch, before continuing uphill towards the cottages near Four Lanes. Despite lots of checking, there was no sign of any Locust Flies on the AtlanticIvy blossom. In fact, thanks to the rather dull weather, there wasn't much sign of anything other than a handful of Ivy Bees and some Eristalis pertinax hoverflies. Pretty soon I reached my target search area and eased down to a slow walk. Did I dip? Did I heck...
This is the mighty Coriander sativum plant that The Ghost and Tiny had rampantly suppressed from me a couple of days earlier. Well I've had the last laugh lads, there were TWO plants growing in that weedy verge, not one, mwaah-ha-haa! That'll teach them to try and get one up on The Gibster! Feeling immensely happy with myself, I tootled back down Rocky Hill Lane and headed towards Old Town via Lower Moors. At Shooters Pool I found another Yellow-browed Warbler plus saw a Blackcap and several Red Admirals on Ivy blossom, but still no Locust Flies. My net-swiping antics had by now caught the attention of a bunch of birders, I quietly readied myself for a verbal onslaught but was pleasantly surprised to find that they were all quite interested in what I was after. "Flies? Oh right!" Were the flies here special, had I seen any good ones, how many species are there in Britain, was I an expert (ha!), how many had I seen, had I seen the odd fella with the leaf-blower machine, what was that all about, etc etc. All very birder-themed questions, I admit, but I was pleased to divulge the little I knew. One chap began telling me about the leggy flies with white wingtips on his garden pond, he put a picture up on Twitter and got a response. Now he knows what a Semaphore Fly is and has even started to look at dragonflies too. You see, there really is a pan-species lister inside everybody!
I eventually arrived at Old Town Bay and spotted Tiny and The Ghost quite a way out into the bay. I clambered my way across the slippery rocks and soon the brotherhood were united once more. Unfortunately the news was not great. "Really hard going, mate. It's either big boulders or nothing" said Tiny. Hmmm. "Did you get the pipit though?" I asked. The look I received said it all, apparently there had been no sign of it since yesterday evening. Oh dear, it had been a bit of a 'dippety doo dah, dippety day' kinda morning for Tiny...
My wellies were in my big rucksack, currently sat in a shipping container waiting to be loaded onto the boat, so I just loitered in the shallows whilst Tiny waded in deeper waters. The Ghost, also sans wellies, looked a bit nonplussed by it all, so we two headed to Tolmans Point and hand searched through some high up rockpools, leaving Tiny to his somewhat fruitless wading in the sea below. We all realised that we should have returned to Porth Mellon, but even had we left straight away the tide would be turning by the time we arrived, so we opted to stay here instead.
But it wasn't all bad news, we still found loads of stuff!
Shore Clingfish (or Cornish Sucker, if you prefer) in a tiny rockpool
The business end of a Green Shore Urchin
Lamellaria perspicua - a sea snail that looks like a sea slug
We also found a couple of large sea slugs beneath a rock. Tiny called them as Grey Sea Slug Aeolidia papillosa, which is a common and distinctive species that we'd all seen before. But these looked wrong to me, too bright maybe. Too white perhaps. Not at all the same as the ones I'm now used to seeing up on Skye, which are duller and greyer. I queried this, Tiny said they looked perfectly normal to him, nobody took any photos of them and that was that. Or so we thought. A bit of subsequent detective work on my part led to a very interesting discovery - Grey Sea Slug has recently (2016) been split into several species! There's a really interesting paper here which details the discovery of these 'new' species and guess what - the paler ones along the rocky shores of southern England are actually Aeolidia filomenae sp. nov, meaning we each of us needed to adjust our PSLs accordingly and, in my case, keep the 'original' species which occurs here on Skye, how very marvellous!
Less contentious was the ID of an elongated isopod I spotted clinging to the edge of a rock Tiny had just heaved onto it's side. Unfortunately my camera was acting up and the lens simply refused to focus properly. I managed three shots of the isopod and gave up. Thankfully iRecord's marine isopod verifier gleaned enough detail to confirm the ID. Somehow. Just try not to laugh too hard...
This is Astacilla danmoniensis (stop laughing, it IS!)
There aren't very many records for this creature on the NBN Atlas and the iRecord verifier has never seen one for himself, so a bit of a lucky spot all in all. There's a fat spine halfway along the creature's abdomen, clearly visible (ahem...) in the upper image, which nails the species. Other goodies included my first Pheasant ShellsTricolia pullus, the first Bootlace Worm I've seen in years and an assortment of bryozoans and scaleworms.
Sadly our time was running out, we simply had to start heading back to Hugh Town and our boat back to the mainland. We cut through the Dump Clump, hearing but not seeing another Yellow-browed Warbler and found something I was ridiculously happy to see
I only saw a single Small White in 2020 - and this is it
It's crazy what you miss living up in NW Scotland, it's just one of the reasons I so enjoy these madcap trips down south.
We boarded nice and early in order to secure a seat on the outside deck and before too long we were waving farewell to these magical isles. It's made me realise quite how much I miss it here, along with some of the folks that call Marys home, most notably Higgo, Spider, Ren and Bob. It has been four years since I quit living here, had circumstances been slightly different...
Our trip across to Penzance was largely uneventful, a couple of distant shearwaters could have been Sooties, a few sightings of Common Dolphins kept us on our toes, but we were well into the final hours of an utterly brilliant week, and every second brought that end closer. I had one last target once we'd berthed at Penzance, red hot gen from The Ghost regards a plant I should have secured years back yet had somehow eluded all of my attempts to find. We shook hands, clapped backs, maybe hugged a bit (but definitely no kissing. Not with tongues anyway) and bade our farewells. Tiny jumped into The Ghost's car and they were off. I had a plant to tick. In the darkness.
Walking to the dry dock area, I soon found the long wall in question and began spotlighting it from the steps below. Sure enough, the gen was indeed 'red hot' and there, in all of it's glory, perched several clumps of Adria BellflowerCampanula portenschlagiana (but you need to pronounce that in a Cockney gangster voice, as in "you schlaaaag")
Torchlit Campschlaaags on a wall - how very, very lovely :)
Returning to my car I wondered firstly would it start, secondly how far would I make it before the need to sleep hit me, and lastly - how the heck could I work things so that I can get myself back down south in the height of summer and spend another week with these crazy mad guys that I call friends.
My week on Scillies had easily exceeded all of my expectations. I had gained some sixty lifers (including a bird, not often that happens nowadays!) out of a total of some 573 species recorded throughout our stay. With further IDs secured once back home, that tally would easily top 600 species. I think Tiny said we'd walked over 70 miles during the week, or was it 170? The memories made will last me forever, from The Ghost's broken finger and cider-drenched burger to Tiny's squeal of "I need that!" as he ran off to tick a stringy grotfinch. Thank you both for agreeing so wholeheartedly to join me on this romp across the isles, adventures such as this don't come often and I'm so glad I was in on this one.
It really is about high time I put this tale to bed, so this shall be one half of the concluding episode of a fantastic week on the Scillies. Maybe then I'll even start writing about the things I've found here on Skye, by way of a change.
Day 7 (Fri 16th October)
Today was all about wading through the rockpools, or to be more precise, wading through very shallow seas over rocky ledges. We were all pretty keen to hit Porth Mellon at low tide seeing as Bob had suggested it was a great spot for marine life. I'd never rockpooled here before, indeed it was new territory for all of us. Would it live up to the hype though?
The tide was falling as we arrived, so without further ado we waded in and split up in search of weirdness, of which we found plenty. The lifers were soon coming in thick and fast, particularly for Tiny who hadn't really spent much time in the waters of the far south west before this trip. Even I managed a modest fistful of lifers, mostly in the crustacean department.
We were in an area dominated by Snakelocks Anemones and I spent quite a bit of time peering into their tentacles in search of either the crab or the shrimp which call these anemones home. No joy, despite lots of effort on my part. I was interrupted by Tiny calling me over to come look at the swanky shrimp and weird hermit crab he'd just found. I splashed my way across and was presented with this delightful shrimp
Just check out that shovel-head and the amazing neon blue halfmoons!
We had no idea what this was, but internet trawls that evening showed it to be Philocheras fasciatus, a lifer for all of us. There were multitudes of small mysid shrimps in the shallows but previous experience has taught me to leave them alone, they aren't easy buggers to get to species.
Tiny's hermit crab was actually three. The ubiquituous Pagurus bernhardus being the first followed by an initially camera shy individual with a largely pale claw and bluish banded legs. Couple of pics of the latter below
This is Anapagurus hyndmanni - another lifer for all three of us
But then I looked at the third hermit crab and became just a little bit excited. Oh my days!!! I'm just going to swamp you with images now, because this little beggar was undoubtedly the find of the day, maybe even find of the entire trip.
Unusual choice of shell. And is that a bright red antenna and a red and blue striped leg I see???
What-the-fuuuu...........?!?!?!
Just LOOK at its eyes, it's like something out of The Muppets!
Contact initiated! I come in peace (well, a shell), earthman...
I had never seen anything like this before! Turns out that this is St Piran's Hermit CrabClibanarius erythropus, a warm water species of crab that is usually only found to the south of Britain. It was first discovered in British waters in the early spring of 1960 at several sites in the south-west. Most of its populations were killed off thanks to the Torrey Canyon disaster and the subsequent clean-up operation, with just two fragile populations subsequently clinging on into the 1980s, after which it became lost as a British species.
Then in 2016, several populations were more or less simultaneously discovered around both the north and south coasts of Cornwall. All animals discovered were of the same size/age class which would indicate they all arrived during a single colonisation event a year or two earlier. Hence, once again, Clibanarius is on the British list. As far as I can tell, this is the first record for Scillies. Quite a thrilling find, in all honesty! I was so captivated by the beast, I even took a bit of video footage.
Eventually I popped it back in the sand and left it to continue on it's way. What a crazily cool beast!
Whilst I'd been busily 'communing' with the crab, the chapshad located me another marine lifer and this time it was new for me but not for them. Sweet!
Snot on a rock, how very lovely. Thanks for sharing, guys.
I actually had no idea what this was, though clearly both Tiny and The Ghost did. "It's a Sea Gherkin, mate" said Tiny. What? Really? No way. "Yep, sure looks like one to me" grumbled The Ghost. Oh right. I quickly had a look in the book and had to agree with them. My picture doesn't show it very well, but there are distinct yellow dots along the flaccid white body which helps clinch it as Pawsonia saxicola aka the Sea Gherkin. I have to say, if I found one of those in my Big Mac I'd be pretty unimpressed. Mind you, as a vegetarian living several hours drive from the nearest McDonalds, I'm not likely to eat many Big Macs anytime soon, though I do like gherkins. The green pickled ones, at least.
Velvet Swimming Crab - vicious bastards with a very strong nip. Note the vampire teeth.
There were good numbers of Olive Squat Lobsters Galathea squamifera huddled on the underside of rocks, I don't recall ever seeing so many in one site before. Despite checking quite a few, I couldn't find any other species with them. The bigger red and blue squatties look amazing, I would definitely like to find those at some point.
Once described by a chuckling Mark Telfer as "the most ridiculous animal I've ever seen"
By now I'd long since given up looking for spider crabs amongst the Snakelocks Anemones, so was really rather pleased when we quite unexpectedly found one beneath a rock!
Leach's Spider Crab Inachus phalangium covered in a sponge
I've never seen this crab before and was pleasantly surprised to see just how sizeable it was (I thought it would be about the size of a 50p coin!) I popped it back into the water whereby it adopted a strangely erect stance with one pair of legs held outstretched in a defensive (offensive?) fashion. Crabs are just weird, who knows what goes through their minds.
I had hoped to be a sneaky bugger and tick off the sponge specific to these crabs, but it turns out there are lots of sponges that grow on them. Ho hum, that'll teach me to be greedy. And then, just as unexpectedly as the first, we found a second Leach's Spider Crab also beneath a rock!
Clearly utilising a very different sponge than the first individual
As if all this crabby shenanigans wasn't enough, we found the usual Green Shore Crab, some quite large Edible Crabs, loads of Broad-clawed Porcelain-crabs, a few Long-clawed Porcelain-crabs, Risso's Crabs and this freaky bugger too
A difficult creature to make sense of, in or out of the water
This is the Long-legged Spider Crab Macropodia rostrata. I took a lot of pictures and fluked one of a feature on the underside of the rostrum which allows a specific identification to be made. They really are frustratingly awkward to photograph well.
As proof that there were non-crustaceans also present, here's the sponge Ophlitaspongia papilla
This is probably a sponge too, though I don't know which. It looks quite distinctive but I've yet to be convinced by anything I've seen online.
In fact, there are probably five and maybe six unidentified species in this image!
The very lowest tides of our trip were happening tomorrow, which was our final day on these glorious islands. We were still undecided about which rockpools to target, but we intended to hit them hard wherever we ended up.
By now we were all a bit knackered, so headed up the hill back to our cottage on The Garrison. I set about trying to ID a few mystery species from earlier whilst The Ghost checked his pager - "There's a Richard's Pipit at Porth Hellick Downs" he casually mentioned. "I need that!" screamed Tiny, "How far is that from here?" I just laughed, "Quite a way buddy. You gonna stomp it in your wellies?" Tiny was knackered, we all were in truth, but he also wanted that bird. "I'm going to get up at 5am and head off, get it at dawn" he stated. "Good luck, I'm not going" replied The Ghost. 5am, I thought. Fuck that, I'll still be asleep. I had to be heading nearly 800 miles back to Skye tomorrow evening.
Our plan was that Tiny would stomp to the Richard's Pipit at 5am, whilst The Ghost and I would take our time, put all of our luggage, including Tiny's, in the collection area and clean the cottage before heading out by about eight or nine. By that time Tiny should have skored the pipit and we could all do some rockpooling together. Old Town Bay was mooted as the best bet, we would meet there late morning, grab a few hours in the water, and then hustle our way back into town for our 3pm boarding on the Scillonian.
Plus I had a plant that I needed to claw back from the boys. Yes, I knew exactly where I'd be heading in the morning...
My name is Seth and I live on Skye. I'm very into nature and I like to blog about about what I find here on Skye. Hence the puntastic blog title: Skye's the Limit. So far so good.
However...
I'm well aware that it's been weeks and weeks and weeks since I last produced a Skye-centric blogpost. Somehow I feel as though I'm swindling you all, what with all my recent Scillies nonsense and bugger all from this glistening jewel in the crown of the Inner Hebrides (glistening coz it never stops bloody raining). Guess what - this blogpost isn't based on Skye either, though it is in Scotland at least. Please do feel free to leave your comments of outraged disgust below.
This latest episode of non-Skye shenanigans all began two days ago, late on Wednesday evening when that old troublemaker The Ghost messaged me:
You heard that there's a Bearded Seal on the Thurso river?
Actually no, I hadn't heard any such a thing. Could this be a random wind-up, I wondered? Two minutes later and I was eye-balling this Twitter post from Dan Langlois who had noticed an 'odd' looking seal on his local river. Hmmm...not a wind-up then. I quickly thought things through. I needed some catch up sleep, I needed to buy some food to make sandwiches, I'd already promised to help a guy paint his room tomorrow. Sod it, I'd play it cool on Thursday, get some decent beauty sleep and head off bright and breezy on Friday morning. Risky, I know.
Thursday duly came and went. Friday I was on the road just five minutes late at 5.05am. I arrived in Thurso at 10am, and was parked up in a car park next to the river just five minutes later. I could see a lady scanning the river with binoculars, but she quickly spied me heading her way, jumped into her car and drove off whilst I was still only halfway across the car park. Fine, I shall find it myself.
I had a long peer in the direction she'd been scanning, seeing six Common Seals playing in the water but nothing else other than a lot of gulls, maybe thirty Mallards and a Shag.
Over-exposed and unable to fix.
Bright gull, dark seaweed, dull light, clueless user. Not ideal. Anyway, beneath that over-exposed shimmering blob is an Iceland Gull, the first one I've self-found this winter since...er...since I found one here on Skye just yesterday!
The tide was falling, the river was quiet, I figured I needed to have a look out to sea. What I didn't expect to find were over 20 surfers maybe 200 metres out. The waves were producing decent rollers and I soon spied a chap quite a way out on exposed rocks with a big lens pointed towards their direction. I hadn't realised it was a surfing hotspot up here. A pretty thorough bout of scanning revealed a number of Common Seals, a single bull Grey Seal, lots and lots of Wigeon, a distant raft of Eider, a few more Shags and not a lot else. Nothing resembling a Bearded Seal, that's for sure.
Feeling pretty frustrated at potentially dipping this mega beast, I took a very slow wander back upriver and grilled absolutely everything for signs of a beard. One of the local ladies had me going for a second, as did a small terrier, but in truth it looked as though I'd be limping out of town empty handed. Bugger.
Scanning back up towards the A9 bridge, I suddenly noticed what appeared to be a seal pup hauled out on the edge of a grassy island in the river. Certainly it was pale enough for a pup, it looked small too. It was sat there all alone, no other seals were this far upstream. Suddenly it raised its head, had a look around, and shuffled back to sleep. THAT WAS IT - shit, I was almost certain! Pale head with darker markings between the eyes, it had to be! My strides quickly lengthened as I hurried along the riverside path. I could still see the seal with my naked eye, but hurried on until I was within a couple of hundred feet of it before stopping for a closer inspection.
BEARDED SEAL - HOLY CRAP!!!!
From my closer vantage point, I could clearly see that this was the Bearded Seal. High fives, Gibster!!! Relief and happiness ran through my mind in equal measures as I stood there, soaking in the experience. By now I was a mere 200ft from the seal, which alternated between snoozing and shuffling around, almost as if trying to find a more comfortable position. It appeared overall far paler than the Common Seals in the river mouth, particularly so around the nape, face and muzzle. I was struck by the small size of the flippers, plus the brownish mark that extended between the eyes. But mostly I was struck by the long whitish whiskers, some of which were just starting to display the curled-in tips as displayed by older individuals. The part-formed whiskers and small size (I'm pretty sure it was the smallest seal I saw today) led me to believe this is a youngster, certainly less than sub-adult. Coz obviously I'm such an expert all of a sudden....
And back into snooze mode again. Note the stubby wee flippers
There were people walking along the footpath, the seal wasn't in the slightest bit bothered, so I closed the distance until I was directly opposite where it lay, a distance of maybe 150 feet with just the river separating us. I continued taking a barrage of images, holding the camera to my binoculars and hoping for the best. The 'best', as it turned out, wasn't especially good. I even managed a bit of video footage, but it's absolutely shaky as hell. As you can see (make sure you watch on 1080 HD)
Happily the images are less sea-sickness inducing than the video. Here are a few more
It was looking really good when the sun briefly broke through!
Just look at how stumpy it is, it's ridiculously proportioned! To be fair, the image above gives the impression it has a large, bulbous head. This is not true, it just has its head hunched into the body. When it stretched its neck it was quite obvious to see that the head is actually very small in proportion to the body. So saying, it's a weirdly short, stubby beastie.
It was around this time that an elderly couple asked me if I was looking at anything of interest. Then their son and daughter-in-law rocked up and suddenly I had a captive audience, none of whom had heard of a Bearded Seal but could all see the whiskers in my photographs. Right then, the Iceland Gull decided to do a series of slow fly-bys before settling on a rock close to the Bearded Seal - how bloody amazing is that, two high Arctic wanderers reunited here in Scotland. I wonder if they recognised one another from 'home'? The son told me there had been a Ross' Gull on the river back in the 1980s, though he hadn't seen it, and that Otters occur all along the river right down into the sea itself. Seems like a very productive site, pity it's five hours away from me!
By now a fine mizzle had descended, not enough to get you wet but enough to cast a haze across further photographs of the seal. Which, by now, had decided to shuffle around some more, thus revealing its very pale underside
I have no idea how long this rare visitor will stay in Thurso River. Maybe a few more days, maybe a few more weeks. Maybe it will stay and become a permanent resident? What I do know is that I'm lucky enough to live in a part of Scotland that enjoys Tier 1 Restrictions; essentially I can do what I like if travelling alone and staying outdoors. I know a few pals down in England that would love to at least have the option of twitching this beautiful (dare I say it - cute) animal.
Three species of seal in one locality, can't say I've ever managed that before. I sped homewards tired but happy. Until I saw this
I know this is "clean energy" but I really don't have to like it. And I don't - not one bit.
Having now had a taste of the rockpools on Scilly, Tiny and The Ghost were positively champing at the bit for more watery shenanigans. The tides were improving daily, culminating in a seriously low tide on Saturday morning, which was the day we were due to depart these fabulous isles.
The Ghost had been performing early morning MVL trap inspections every day whilst I slumbered, so far with little of interest to show for it. This morning though, he actually found a halfway decent moth in the trap and kindly whacked it in a pot, awaiting my inspection.
The Delicate Mythimna vitellina - a southern migrant and suspected breeder
I've only seen The Delicate a couple of times before, once in Dorset and once here on St Marys, so I'm pleased The Ghost potted this up for me to look at. Clearly a bit worn, bashed and less than pristine, I agree, but he's a good fella really...
We struck out for the rockpools of Porthcressa Bay, a site where I've previously found Montagu's Blenny, a fish that was high up on Tiny's Fish Hitlist. We followed the tide out whereupon Tiny quickly realised that one of his wellies leaked and that kneeling in the sea was a great way to fill the one that wasn't. Haha, sucks to be him! TinyWetFeet didn't care, he was having far too much fun chasing fish with his net.
Montagu's Blenny! Sorted, can we go home now?
Well the Montagu's Blenny certainly didn't take too long to fall, in fact we quickly found several more in the smaller rockpools. Note the single feathery 'tentacle thing' on it's forehead, a diagnostic feature of this species. Tiny was happy, I think it was a new fish for Ghostie too. But could we find any other fish amongst the weed and pools? Hell yeah, we certainly could!
Mostly Rock Gobies, they were pretty common beneath rocks amongst the weed
I'm pretty confident the orange one is a Small-headed Clingfish
And moderately happy the mottled one is Common Goby. Should have checked it properly!
Big bad bruiser of a Rock Goby - up close and personal
Five-bearded Rockling - check out the tall spine in front of the first dorsal fin
Better view of the five barbels. The first dorsal was constantly quivering very rapidly
We uncovered quite a few Worm Pipefish and a Shanny, plus some small wrasse of an unknown species, but failed to find Giant Goby, which should occur in rockpools quite high up the beach, especially in areas with freshwater run-off. We had all of that, and plenty of gung-ho-itty when it came to chasing down fish in the weed, but sadly Giant Goby eluded us this time. We still had time, we'd try elsewhere later. Giant Goby would be a lifer for all of us, we wanted it baaaaad.
Obviously, there's a lot more to rock-pooling than just finding fish. We did pretty bloody amazing for crabs and anemones, but the most exciting find, for the boys at least, came near the end of our session in the rockpools. One pool high up the shore was full of green Ulva, and attached to several of these were Tiny's first ever stalked jellyfish. You can probably imagine his tiny squeals of delight when he clapped eyes on this
This is Calvadosia campanulata, a widespread species of stalked jellyfish. As is hinted in the name, stalked jellyfish don't swim around like most jellyfish do, they remain attached to pieces of weed and are generally found in shallow waters and rockpools, unlike their pelagic cousins which tend to die rather quickly if stuck in a rockpool. If you look closely at the semi-transparent edges to this jelly, you'll be able to see many tiny orange dots embedded in the 'skin'. These are known as papillations and, combined with features on the arms, identify the species for us.
The following two images are of a different individual of the same species. You can, at a push, discern the papillations plus the patterning and distribution of the white stinging nematocysts on the inside of the bell and arms also help to distinguish this as a second Calvadosia campanulata. They're pretty cool creatures!
No stalked jellyfish were needlessly uprooted during this photo session
I'll just pad the next bit out with a bunch of shots of some other stuff we found on the shore that day.
Painted Topshell - we found just two or three of these
The Star Ascidian Botryllus schlosseri on a Serrated Wrack blade
Variation on a theme - more Botryllus schlosseri this time growing over an encrusting bryozoan
Turbicellepora magnicosta aka the Orange Peel Bryozoan - quite common on rocks here
After we'd been pushed off the beach by the incoming tide, we decided to head cross-country in search of some plants we'd yet to see. This time around, there was even a lifer plant for me! So we headed to Rocky Hill, paused for Tiny to admire his first House Holly Fern, then wandered up the rough track keeping an eye open for insects on theAtlantic Ivy blossom and birds in the trees as we ambled towards our lifer plant. It's a lovely track and botanical highlights included German-ivy, Kangaroo Fern and Bear's Breech.
I think it's fair to say that Ivy Bee has successfully colonised St Marys. We saw hundreds!
I was busy swiping and potting flies from the Ivy blossom (rampant suppressor that I am...) whilst Tiny and The Ghost marched on ahead. I collected seven or eight Pollenia, a genus of flies with crinkly golden hair on their thorax. Microscopic examination is required to differentiate the species that occur in Britain, but Pollenia rudis is the bog standard, dirt common one. I was quietly confident I'd find a different Pollenia down here. Sod's Law, they were all Pollenia rudis.
I finally caught up with The Ghost and Tiny, patiently waiting for me at the appointed grid reference for our lifer plant. Little did I suspect they'd later massively grip me off with a plant I'd unwittingly walked past. To be fair, they didn't know it either at the time, but grip me off they surely did. Anyway, back to our target plant - Angular Sea Fig. We had the griddie from the Scilly Flora. We knew it grew on walls. There was only one wall here, rather unfortunately completely covered in Pale Dewplant. I climbed some steps to check the back of the wall - nada. The owner of the farm suddenly appeared to ask if he could help in any way as he'd been watching me mill across his wall for the past ten minutes. I explained we were after a plant, which should be on this wall, but suspected it had been lost beneath the sprawling mass of Pale Dewplant. "Is that what this stuff is?" he asked me. "I planted that about four years ago and it's a right thug now innit" he said. Arse, our lifer was somewhere under that, doubtless killed off two or three years back. I looked at the bench built into the base of the wall and sighed. I've sat on that very bench several times over the years, doubtless within inches of Angular Sea Fig the whole time. I've probably gazed at it and figured it was just a small Hottentot Fig. What a clueless twat.
Schizostylis coccinea merrily growing along the track across Rocky Hills
A bit disappointed that our 'dead cert' lifer was no more, we cut cross-country towards a Barred Warbler which Tiny was rather keen to tick. Somehow, we took an extensively circuitous route via Holy Vale cottages (great to bump into Martin Goodey again!), then across to Newford Duckpond where we admired the somewhat underwhelming patch of Cornish Moneywort (and I forgot to point out that the big trees both here and at Holy Vale are Dutch Elm, much to The Ghost's consternation as he needs it as a lifer). Pale Gallingale has really taken a hold around the duckpond and adjacent fields, I can't say I remember it being here when I lived on Scillies in 2016. I knew a great shortcut to Watermill Cove, site of the Barred Warbler, but went a bit wrong and we ended up hitting the coast at Innisidgen! Oh well, the walk down to Watermill Cove was very pleasant. We found a Firecrest, had high flying Peregrine, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk all within moments of each other and the track led us through a grove of Hedge Ragwort with Altar Lily growing in the shade, the latter both being lifers for the boys. No sign of the Barred Warbler, despite Tiny doing his utmost to string a couple of Robins that were flicking about in the hedges.
We took a slow wander back into town, detouring to spend a bit of time in Higher Moors. Tiny was busily suctioning the heck out of the Greater Tussock Sedge that grow here, yet more spiders and tiny beetles being found in their depths. We bumped into John Martin who asked if we'd seen any Locust Flies on the Ivy up Rocky Hills Lane (dammit, I've always wanted to see one of those and we'd just been there!) He'd photographed one there a few days beforehand, though hadn't realised what it was at the time. He also asked us if we'd seen the Coriander growing up there. Tiny suddenly pulled out his camera, reviewed a few pics and asked, "Is this it with the white petals?" "Ah good, so you all saw it" came John's happy response. Whaaaat??? I hadn't seen it, when the heck did this happen??? Turns out, whilst I was swiping at flies, Tiny and The Ghost were papping pics of a mystery plant that John had just identified for them. Flippin' cheek! I was gripped, gripped like you have no idea. My state of being gripped didn't lessen any when John casually mentioned the drake Mandarin Duck was showing from the hides just a few metres away. Mandarin is an absolute mega for Scilly and I needed it, I ran!!!
Alas, what with the hides being closed, I just couldn't eyeball enough of the pools and I failed to see the Mandarin. I later learned that it had flown to Porthloo Duckpond (and probably straight over my head whilst I was staring in dismay at the back of Tiny's camera) where it undoubtedly showed marvellously well. Bugger. The only upshot to the entire Higher Moors fiasco was that I saw several large Eels in the channel which Tiny and The Ghost missed. Grumpy much, moi??
Some spider or another, covering its eyes in an effort not to see Coriander or Mandarins...
