Scilly Boys - Part 2

Day 3 (Mon 12th October)

After enjoying far too many hours beauty sleep, Tiny and The Ghost were up at the crack of seven and keen to head back to Bryher where the Swainson's Thrush had been seen again last night. They both wore grim expressions (The Ghost still had a sore head and Tiny hadn't had a lifer for almost ten hours). I finally emerged from my pit some five hours after entering it at 3am, and spotted a moth in a pot sat on the table top. It was a Feathered Ranunculus, but it had thrown The Ghost by being of the endemic subspecies scillonea which looks quite a bit different to the mainland race. 

We desperately needed a food plan. I had half a bag of nuts left over from Tresco stores. Tiny was in mid-catastrophic meltdown due to insufficient coffee intake. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't finished my second bag of chips from Saturday evening's chip shop session. I soon found them laying in a rubbery, greasy heap beneath the table. So, with our breakfast dilemma solved (excepting The Ghost who refuses to eat before 8pm), we planned our day. Food. Chips and nuts duly wolfed, we now had none left. Three days on the island and we'd yet to make it inside the co-op. Saturday's queue was too horrific to contemplate (hence chip shop to the rescue). Sunday we were on the boat before it opened and it had closed again by the time we returned, Bob's soup had saved us that time. Today we would hit it early and raid the aisles, then run straight onto the 10:15am Bryher boat. The co-op opened at 10am, we designated Tiny to do the supermarket sweep, he started the queue at 9:20am. Proper hardcore. I headed to the toilet block to address an issue, presumably resulting from finishing Saturday's cold chips as Monday's breakfast... 

I returned to the co-op to discover that Tiny had left his post at the front of the (now well-established) queue. What the hell??? Turns out the first hour is only for old folks, even though they use it throughout the day. I tried to convince them that I was actually 95 years old, but they weren't falling for it. Old bastards. Luckily for us the corner shop was open, so we stocked up on emergency provisions (Mars Bars, Lucozade, Red Bull, crisps) and headed for the Bryher boat. Lots of birders, hmmm, lots and lots of birders. Our plan, once landed, was to hustle straight to Popplestones and beat the crowds, just in case the Swainson's proved to be crowd shy. And hustle we bloody well did! As it transpired, Tiny and I were first on site, just one birder already in attendance, my old mate Steve who I've known for years and was staying on Bryher for the week. We waved to each other in recognition and settled down to scan. A few minutes passed before Steve gave a quick whistle - he had the bird!!! We carefully hustled over to his side and there, in all of its glory, was an empty hedge. Huh? Then a small thrush flitted into a Coprosma and began picking off the small orange berries - SWAINSON'S!!!!! Fuck yeah, where was Ghost??? Ah, he was here too - excellent! We all enjoyed great views as it flitted between the Pittosporum and Coprosma, often alighting on a curved twig. We watched it until it suddenly flew off - pretty much as the boatload of birders descended. I reckon maybe half of them saw it, if that. I even managed a couple of digi-binned efforts. 

And when I say efforts...

...I wasn't kidding!

Pressure off (for we three at least), we indulged in some mild on the spot dancing, punching of the air, fist-bumping, high fives and subdued whooping. After all, it's not often you see a new bird. Not for The Ghost and myself, at least. Tiny(Lister) probably gets new birds most times he goes out, but not so we old farts. I got chatting with Steve, who mentioned that he hadn't seen me for a while and had heard that I was banned from the island. Whaaat? I had left in an awful hurry, it's true. But I reckon I was blamed for something I didn't do. Anyway, I was cleanshaven and with a ponytail back then, no Bryher residents would recognise me now. Nevertheless, I kept my head down as best I could. Some folks have long memories...

I'm now thinking the coffee-swilling big fella is Tiny's photographer as well as his hair stylist

We were done with the Swainson's Thrush. It hadn't shown itself since we'd last seen it fly into cover (I'm fairly sure our celebratory dancing and singing had nothing to do with it's absence, regardless of the slanderous mutterings emanating from the stony-faced crowd of twitchers). The Ghost was suddenly very keen for us to make an attempt at Orange Bird's-foot on Heathy Hill. I'd seen it once when I lived here in 2016, but never before or since. It's an extremely diminutive plant on a large hillside, and only found in a couple of very discrete patches. Hmmm. I hoped I wouldn't let the boys down and that my TinyRecall would remember the correct rock it grew beside. And the correct trail across the correct part of the hill to get to that correct rock. Hmmm indeed. We set off, crashing through the bushes as we left...

It didn't start well. The Ghost insisted that I was heading in the wrong direction, that Heathy Hill was to our right. I agreed, but pointed out that I personally could not walk across water and so would have to veer inland a tad before striking right. Eventually, after Tiny had pointed to the big bay of water on the map, he relented and followed. Sheesh, this was gonna be tough going! And then we were on Heathy Hill itself. I hoped. I took a wrong track, luckily realised this early on, took another track and suddenly was stood in a spot that looked familiar. "It's on the left side of this track with Common Bird's-foot growing bang opposite on the right side of the track. There's a couple of stones I'll recognise when we get there, but it's really close to here" I said. Then everything stopped looking quite so familiar - where were those stones??? I fell to my knees and crouched over the sward in search of our target, I knew we were close. Tiny and The Ghost did likewise. I changed to a spot a little downhill, nope, went back to where I'd been. Then Tiny yelled "Got it!" just twenty feet downslope from my position. Darn! I say darn, but it sure took the pressure off my shoulders and he had indeed "got it" too. Happy days, we'd successfully located the Orange Bird's-foot! 

Orange Bird's-foot found in vegetative state (the plant, not the finder)

My fingertip for scale. Skilfully located on an open hillside (the plant, not my fingertip)

Shown here with a hairy sprig of Common Bird's-foot added for comparison

We quit Heathy Hill in high spirits and cut through some fields towards a shortcut I knew. Or would have done if not for the fence lines that had sprung up to keep folks away from the large flock of free range chickens. Eventually we meandered our way through, finding some nice arable weeds on the edge of one bulb field including several Weasel's Snout and a lone Statice in the exact spot I ticked it in 2016! My shortcut up a rubble track enabled Tiny to repeat his Red Cage Fungus finding antics, this one located amongst woodchip in a flowerbed of all places!

It's just so very bloody weird!

Lesson learned, I declined to take a sniff of this one. I ain't falling for that again anytime soon! I was on a mission to take The Ghost to a couple of plants I'd previously given him gen for, but he'd missed. One site had been turned into a driveway, the plant just wasn't there any longer. The other site had become so overgrown and full of tipped concrete blocks that I think that plant had gone too. But we did see a whole lot of this, which none of us recognised

I cheekily suggested Cape Daisy (it's my default setting for any big flowers on Scilly that I don't know) but a bit of internet detective work that night resulted in my nailing it as Arctotis aspersa, otherwise known as the White-flowered African Daisy. Heck, I was almost right after all. We noticed this plant growing at several sites across the islands over the next few days, the crinkly almost pinnate leaves being particularly eye-catching. 

We had an abortive stick insect hunt, I've seen the brown morph of Prickly Stick at this precise spot before, but again lucked out (we'd previously spent a bit of time peering into bramble patches without any sign of the beasts despite finding lots of feeding damage). We decided a night assault was required, and soon. 

By now we had worked our way back to the quay where we jumped our boat ride back to St Marys. We ventured into town, the co-op was queued back almost to Old Town, sod that. Happily a deli was open, so we ate healthily for a change before heading uphill via the Sally Port entrance. From here it was just a few metres to Hugh House where we scoured the garden borders for a small plant the boys needed. All I could see was shedloads of Lesser Swinecress and the odd Groundsel. Arse. Then Tiny yelled "Is this it?" and sure enough he had found it. 

Annual Buttonweed growing through Lesser Swi...oh, wait. Doh!!

Yep, all that wall to wall Lesser Swinecress in the flowerbed borders? That's it, that was the Annual Buttonweed we were looking for. I'm glad we found a few in flower else that would have been an embarrassing balls up on my part! We were barely back in the cottage when the pager burst into life, Red-breasted Flycatcher on the Lower Broome Platform, Garrison. I knew a shortcut through the bracken, TWITCH ON! Five minutes later we arrived to find maybe twenty or so birders strung out along the path, all looking in different directions. That's never a great sign. Happily one fella spotted it from the raised path towards the Morning point Battery and we all enjoyed great views of the RB Flicker doing it's thing from the tips of dead elm twigs and from the top of a Tamarisk bush. A very nice bird, the first any of us had seen for a while (four years for me) and Tiny's best views ever! I love these little jams, it's part of what makes Scilly so special. 

There were still a few hours of daylight left and we had it in mind to hit some rockpools. Tiny was keen to see the plants at Tolmans Point, particularly the Ake-ake which he seemed to enjoy repeating endlessly in a funny voice... so that's where we headed. Other botanical delights at Tolmans included Deltoid-leaved Dewplant, Red Crassula, Shrubby Orache, Coastal Daisybush and Western Clover - which neither The Ghost or Tiny would tick seeing as it wasn't in flower. Fair play, I knew what it was though, it blankets this spot in flowers during the summer months.  

Rockpools. Finally. Well, they were pretty decent. I even managed a couple of lifers for myself which was nice. What I didn't do was take many photo's, so you'll just have to take my word that fun was had and that we found loads. Here's one beastie that I did pap, seeing as I knew it was something I'd never seen before

This is the scaleworm Lepidonotus clava

We were all thoroughly enjoying ourselves in the rockpools, but there was definitely a slight restraint shown, a quiet sense of anticipation that things could be better. The tides were huge in a few more days and we planned to hit the lowest remaining tide of the year on Friday. In a sense, this was just a practice run for that mega session. Technically, the very lowest tide occurred during the hours of darkness early on Saturday morning, which was the day we were due to depart Scilly. We'd all brought headtorches with us... Hmmm, slippery rocks, incoming tides, utter darkness, miles from anywhere, all alone and with zero phone reception. I mean, what could possibly go wrong...

Back to today though. I'm usually pretty clued up on the life to be encountered in rockpools, admittedly it's often tricky to tell if you're looking at a sponge or tunicate or bryozoan on occasion, but I can usually suss it to Class at least. However, the splodge on the rock in the image below has me beaten. I suspected sponge at first, then tunicate, then space snot, then marine algae and then pollution. And there was lots of it! The red coloured area is exposed to sunlight, the orange area is on the underside of the boulder. It's clearly one organism that flushes red when exposed. But what is it? Answers/suggestions muchly appreciated!

Alien space snot, or something of this earth (unlikely...space snot for me!)

These particular rockpools were quite hard to work, big boulders interlaced with large areas of rusted metal and engine pieces from the wreck of the S.S.Brodfield, a British steamship which ran aground here 104 years ago next month. I messaged Bob and asked where he reckoned the very best rock-pooling was to be found on St Marys. He came back with Porthloo, Pelistry and Porthcressa Bays, not a word regards Old Town Bay! Bit of a shocker really, I always thought Old Town Bay was THE spot to hit, but Bob knows about these things so we listened. I've rock-pooled at 'Cressa Bay and Pelistry Bay before, but never Porthloo. That would be new turf (well, surf) for me. 

By now we were properly starving. Options are limited at Old Town. There's Old Town Cafe (it was closed), Tolman's Cafe (changed name and hands and closed for the season!), the shop (never bloody open at the best of times. It was shut) and Old Town Inn, which from memory does damn fine pizza. It too was closed. Fook. Happily it was due to open soon, so we loitered and, after choosing an outside table (which amazed the landlord even though it wasn't that cold) we sat there for about an hour until the realisation that we'd been forgotten finally dawned upon our weary minds. Happily, Tiny stepped up to the task and reminded the landlord that we were sat outside in the dark, slowly growing numb in the wind, and that we still wanted food. In the end it was decent scoffage. Except for The Ghost who had some daft numpty knock a near-full glass of cider all over his burger and chips before he'd even taken a first bite from it. I won't mention who was to blame, but it wasn't The Ghost and Tiny's hands just aren't big enough to be that clumsy...  Somehow, the booze went to our heads and we were all giggling like schoolgirls as we wisecracked daft names and situations at each other. The 'Tony Frogmouth' one was an absolute classic, but it makes no sense out of context. Just trust me it was fkkn great. As was the 'Help us Tony Wanker Nobi' hoodie quip. And 'Old Tony's Incontinent', that was a goodun too!

Anyways...

By the time we'd demolished our assorted burgers avec/sans spilled cider it was pitch dark. The only sensible thing to do was drop in to Old Town Cemetery in search of stick insects. Now, as an aside I'm quite into ghost stories and stuff (and FFS don't get me started on sasquatch!) and I once accompanied my mate J from Epsom all the way up to Borley Rectory one August evening many years back. For those of you who don't know, Borley Rectory was probably Britain's most haunted building, until the owner burned it down in a botched insurance scam. The churchyard is now the place to head in search of ghosts. We didn't see any that night, though I did have a weird moment caught in a definite coldspot which was...er...weird! Point being, I've wandered churchyards in search of ghosts, but I've never searched churchyards for stick insects accompanied BY a Ghost. Oddly, almost as soon as we entered the churchyard, he vanished. He just wasn't there any more! Sod it, probably chatting with old pals, I figured. Tiny and I scanned brambles for stick insects. 

The annoyingly familiar "Got one!" cry came from Tiny. Blast it but he's good, is Tiny. I bumbled my way through headstones, hoping none of the occupants were friends of The Ghost, and found myself looking at a Laboratory Stick Insect. "That's a Lab Stick, not a Prickly! Check the missing cerci and red armpits!" I blurted. I had no idea Lab Sticks were in the Old Town area, I thought they were restricted to the Normandy area which is where I've seen them before. Here it is, a full adult at 2.4 metres in length

Carausius morosus the Laboratory Stick Insect 

I gave a piercing whistle and The Ghost was suddenly and quite mysteriously stood there in our midst, the spooky fecker. Apparently he'd found an unattended MVL trap and had been looking around for interesting moths (a likely story). Anyway, he duly oohed and aahed at the Lab Stick, there was also a Common Frog nearby (the only amphibian known on Scillies, I think) which we duly papped like the good little PSLers we are. Quitting the churchyard, we ambled along the lane towards the road. Loads of head-height brambles were growing along the top of the wall and suddenly I spied a small stick insect

What the birders call a record shot, I believe

And this is what it looked like once removed from the overhang and photographed properly

This is a young Prickly Stick Insect, which is the commonest stick insect across Scillies. Note the tiny 'thorns' down its back and obvious cerci. I went on to find two or three more (nice to get one up on eagle-eyed Tiny for once!) and then I looked down at the bare soil by my feet. What the...?

Now, you may call me weird (and you'd be right), but I have rather a soft spot for terrestrial flatworms and Scilly has a fantastic range of flatworms on offer, mostly alien species it has to be said. The upper image shows the Australian Flatworm Australplana sanguinea, which nationally is actually fairly widespread yet has eluded me all these years. Bizarrely, I was with The Ghost when I finally found my first New Zealand Flatworm, maybe he could be my lucky platyhelminthes mascot? I looked into his eyes...erm...yeah, maybe I'll just keep that thought to myself. The lower image shows Kontikia ventrolineata, there were easily a few dozen of these strewn across the track. I've seen this species before, though only here on Scillies, but never in such numbers. Clearly I need to spend more time wandering quiet churchyards after dark! 

Our last notable species of the night was this rather splendid spider, found clinging to the underside of a boulder that I'd just lifted in search of yet more flatworms

Segestria senoculata - also known as the Snake-back Spider

As we wandered  up the hill I suddenly stopped in my tracks. We were stood next to a roadside charity stall, the type that sells jams, potatoes, plant bulbs and eggs. This one held several eggboxes - holy cow! We quickly counted all the change we had in our pockets and managed to buy a dozen eggs and some apples, happy days!! By the time we'd wandered down into Hugh Town the co-op queue had disappeared - double holy cow!!!! We stormed down the aisles like possessed devils, three days we'd been here and this was our first time inside the shop. Three!!  Needless to say, Tiny aimed for the coffee aisle, I aimed for the vino and The Ghost headed straight for the chocolates. Our rucksacks bulging, we headed back to our cottage on The Garrison and ate. Happy days, what on earth would the morrow bring, we wondered.