Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Wildlife category. Noteworthy entries are filed topmost.
Lovely Lizard
*This is a blog from last summer i didn’t post at the time as it wasn’t finished, but I might as well now*
After a slighly stressful week C & I got the chance to join a bunch of friends for a couple of dives off Celtic Cat. The weather was pretty terrible, with some wind arriving, the temperature dropping and the rain coming in heavy showers. Still, the sea was flat and the reports of good visibility from the earlier dives that we had missed had us excited.
The first questio was did we want to dive a kown wreck, or try and find a wreck off Lizard Point that had sunk on a reef in the late 1800’s and was difficult to find. Having never dived off the south of Lizard Point and expecting the best viz on the flood tide comingup to HW slack I was all too keen to agree with the wreck-nuts..except for me it was the reef that sounded promising!
On station nicely in time the shot was dropped and showed very little current running. We kitted up and dropped in. Immediately it was apparent that we were “on the viz”. The shotline stretched down below and we could see the first divers in a good 15 metres or more below us. Flying down the shot the reef came into view. It was large, rounded rocks, with sheer-sided gullies, floored with white sand between. Lying almost next to the shot, convinced he was invisible was a small turbot. Completely reliant on his camouflage pattern he stayed stock-still whilst I photographed him. Being able to get up close to a fish like this is always a real buzz. You get to examine the way they are put together, and just how amazing the patterns formed by their scales are.
Sea Hare
Sea hares are marine gastropods. This little beauty was found with two others, who were mating, in the eel grass beds in the Helford Estuary. Sea hares are hermaphrodites and form mating chains, so no doubt this one was on its way to or from the occasion. They are herbivores and allegedly the seaweed they munch on contributes to their colour.
The flaps of skin that wrap over their back cover a flat shell and their tentacles are the items that give them their name, supposedly resembling rabbit or hare ears.
Higher than a kite..well, kestrel!
To top off our trip to Salcombe we spent a few hours on Friday doing a short hike along the coast path. We parked the car at the hotel at Soar Mill Cove and walked out from there. The hotel is up a fairly long, grassy hill from the lovely, unspoilt valley-enclosed beach at the cove, and was the formal start of the walk. Parking costs £3 for the day, payable at the hotel reception. We must have made a sight standing in the lobby of the 4-star hotel in hiking boots, khakis rolled up to mid shin, baseball caps and sunglasses!
Fee paid we ambled off down the hill. As soon as you are away from the hotel all you can hear is birdsong. We counted four or five different types of butterfly, including many silver-studded blues on the path in front of us and to the left a mixed hillside of sheep and cattle amused themselves by running down the slope towards a pair of loud, fighting pheasants, then stood, staring.
Once at the beach the valley sides rise up steeply each side andyou can follow the coast path south towards Bolt head, one of the most southerly points of Britain, or north towards Bolt Tail and Hope Cove. Out plan was to turn left and go south to Bolt Head, have a spot of lunch and then turn back. The walk on paper would be only about 5-6 miles but included some steep climb - the most serious of which was just over the first bump. After a few days of diving, and given the hot sun we didn’t fancy anything more taxing.
Turning left we mounted the first short climb and as we hit the end we saw the steep climb up to the rolling tops of the cliffs that awated us. The path up was a mix of worn mud, shale, rocky steps and grassy slope. We were glad of our good boots and marvelled as some of the other footwear we saw whilst on the wander. I am sure that soft, white, slip-on moccasins do the job fine when all is going well, but I wouldn’t fancy trying to regain a foothold once I had slipped in them, and I am not sure how well they support an ankle on sometimes uneven terrain!
Sweating and puffing we reached the top and from a rocky point we had the first wonderful view. Flat, blue sea with starlight twinkles from a high sun, sailing boats below, and a coastline that signalled the dramatic end of England as green heaths and field stopped abruptly and fell straight down into the ocean below.
From hear the path meanders close to the cliff edge, up and donw over the undulating cliff-tops. The predominant environment is gorse heath, but occasionally this gives way to grassy meadow, where man has exerted his power as far as he can. Aafter a while a final drop heralds the last climb if Bolt head is your target and end up on a ridge, jutting out to sea, with a WW2 battlement at the very end, and some perfect little rock stacks as nature’s picnic table, giving views to the mouth of the estuary and a small bay on one side, and the coastline to the north, whence you have come, on the other.
We sat in the sun and brought out the water bottles and small snack that we had packed. Lazing there, smiling and admiring the view my gaze was caught by something that came past Caroline’s head, on the other side to me, as it wheeled in front of us, and slightly below it was immediately clear that it was a kestrel. It swung along the grassy edge of the cliff below us and then turned to come back again before passing over our heads to return to hovering, in classic kestrel style, over the long grass behind us.
The silence was shortly broken by the faint hum of some folk playing around in a powerful RIB below. I may have had more time for them if they were diving, of course, but the boat was just having a hoolie. It sped right across the entrance of the estuary, past sail boats before doing “doughnuts” in the bay below us. We could hear shrieks from the women aboard so I suspect that it was all done to impress!
Legs rested we set out on the return leg. The sun was hot and high and a judicious reapplication of the SPF 25 was needed, as were frequent gulps of water - now less than cool! The views were still stunning however and we walked along with that constant half-smile that comes with just being relaxed and happy. As we reached the beach at Soar Mill Cove I was very tempted to abandon boots and socks and go for a paddle, but the thought of making the last walk up the hill to the hotel with sandy feet deterred me and headed straight up.
I must admit that I was shattered byt he time we reached the car. Lots of practise and training is needed if we are to fulfill our aims to walk the Inca trail to Machu Pichu late next year, but it will be worth it, and if the training for it can be as enjoyable as that small hike along some of Britain’s most beautiful coastline it will not be too great a hardship.
Snaffling Snails
After a promisingly sunny start to the day it rained. Big, fat, thundery drops came down for about an hour, leaving behind air not fresh, but thick and muggy.
This encouraged the large snails that inhabit every nook, cranny and crevice of our “natural looking” garden to come out and play. This is all fine (apart from the distressing crunches from underfoot it often brings) but our three cats have good reason not to share our relaxed approach to snails.
They are pampered pussies who only wander the garden supervised, and when they can’t be supervised they go into their outdoor area which consists of a run with multi-level shaleving for sun-bathing and birdspotting, a tented area for the ginger one to avoid the sun, and an insulated and linoleumed shed, equipped with cushions, pillows and a duvet for avoiding the thought they are outdoors at all!
As one of them is diabetic food is provided all the time to even out his eating. This comes in the form of special slow energy release diabetic cat biscuits. Snails like these too. When I popped out a moment ago to escort the three lovelies indoors I found their bowl being raided by three fat snails with one of the cats sat watching in disgust! I grabbed the camera and managed to get a snap of one of the perpetrators before they sped away……if you see this snail do not approach him. He is a desperado on the run from the law and may be dangerous..
Round and Round the Mulberry..
Whilst waiting to actually get a dive in the sea I thought I would write a brief description of a site I enjoy very much, but which I will probably see little of this year due to the boat I regularily used leaving the area.
This site is off the coast of West Sussex in the south of England. It lies at around 10m deep and makes a refreshing change from the tendancy that UK divers sometimes have of assuming the best is always deeper. Continue reading this entry »
How old is old?
News stories earlier this year covered the 175th birthday of Harry, one of three Giant Tortoises taken, along with two others, from the Galapagos islands by Charles Darwin on his famous expedition in 1853. This story really caught my imagination - imagine the changes that tortoise has seen, the history it was part of!
Then yesterday came the news that Awaita,a tortoise that was allegedly the pet of Clive of India, had died! The estimates bandied around here are that Awaita was 250 years old. There are going to be attempts to carbon date the remains of this veteran creature, but even if he wasn’t that old it is still a tale that stops you dead in your tracks.
Think about the consequences if humans could live that long. Would it affect the way we behave, knowing that the things we do, fully aware of thier destructive implications, would take affect in our lifetimes? Would fuel-guzzling cars fall out of fashion overnight when we realised it was us, not our children or grandchildren who will face the true effects of global warming? Would fleets of fishing vessels begin to regulate themselves as the industry recognized that it wasn’t a working life of 30 or 40 years they needed to survive, buy one of 200 years?
How about the size of families? Would they reduce so that the planet’s population stabilised, fearful of the overload that would happen within lifetimes as 7 or 8 generations needed to co-exist?
Maybe it would just be a good idea if we all imagined we could live that long - if we developed the ability to empathise with future genreations instead of just looking out for our own? After all, who really wants to work for 200 years?
Spring is not yet sprung…
Looking through some photos on the hard-drive on my PC I came across a series I took of frogs in our neighbours’ pond at this time last year. I remember the day well. It was a gorgeous, sunny, warm day; we were all say in the garden in t-shirts, drinking chilled wine after an afternoon sorting through the composter in order to get some decent compost out to fill our new, raised vegetable beds.
The pond was full to the brim with frogspawn and every time someone walked past there were several watery plops and sploshes as frogs dived for cover. I decided to go and get the camera and see if I could capture a few shots of them. As it was I came out lucky and got a few pics that, as a point and shoot snapper, I was very pleased with.
It did feel a bit odd to click away as they earnestly went about creating the next froggy generation….
The same time this year there is no sign of any frogs as yet. I haven’t seen a single daffodil in bloom, the snowdrops are still out and I have scraped ice from my car window twice so far this week! By my estimates we are at least six weeks behind in the onset of spring.
The big question is, however, does this mean a lovely summer of no winds, clear skies and perfect diving to make up for the extended winter?
Diving British Columbia - Quadra Island
Introduction
Like many, I did my first dive training in the warm waters of the Egyptian Red Sea. However, unlike some cold water quickly called me and I found I enjoyed UK diving immensely. So the viz wasn’t as good, and you had to wear enormous amounts of gear to cope with the cold water, but there was something about it.
The pleasure of finding a creature to hover and admire for a while was special in comparison to all those tropical fish that flirted shamelessly for one’s attention on tropical reefs. The variety of environments with seabeds made from the finest sand or the largest boulders, of crushed shells or mud or metres of thick silt, and of kelp forests with hidden promises within. Ah, yes, kelp forests- a particular favourite of mine. I could spend a whole dive poking around in the trailing blades or thick stems or kelp, stalking the beasties that use this amazing plant as home.
Then a friend told me of a place for a different diving holiday. It had cold water, giant kelp, fish very different from what we see around our shores and to top it all everything was “three times larger than here”. Surely this was too good to be true? Apparently not, the same friend also informed me that it was described by Jacque Cousteau as “the best cold-water diving in the world”. Continue reading this entry »