The Safari forgot to look for Old Ladies and Gothics (don't moths have great names!)
in the garden at Base Camp last night; these two species are being seen in
friends’ gardens not too far from Base Camp but so far we’ve never had either
species grace our Buddleia with their presence.
So a minor set back last night but easily rectified by a
crop of decent warm weather coming up hopefully one or both species will be
found before to long.
This morning the strong overnight wind hadn’t abated and the
sea was far too choppy to stand any chance of seeing any mammals; there’s been
a flurry of Harbour Porpoise sightings away down the far end of the South-side
recently and it would appear that the pod of six Bottle Nosed Dolphins we saw a
few weeks ago are still kicking around offshore but over the horizon.
Far closer than the horizon from Patch 2 this morning were
two Arctic Skuas. One of which harried a Herring Gull in to giving it a
meal...not sure we’d relish the contents of a Herring Gulls crop/stomach but
it’s obviously manna from heaven for the skuas.
Not a great lot of anything else out there other than a few
distant terns.
After a quick cuppa we were back out leading a large group
of young kiddies on their rockpooling session. The wind last night meant there
was some interesting stuff washed up on the beach. The very first thing we
picked up was a White Piddock shell which are not at all common or regular on
our beach; unbroken too which is unusual for this very fragile species.
That seemed to be a good omen as before too long the nets
were hoiking out huge numbers of small Brown Shrimps and a good many Common
Prawns. It wasn’t long before the first
live crab appeared in one of the trays although we did need a microscope to see
it properly, it was a tiny juvenile; bigger ones were eventually netted.
Amongst the shrimps was another small wriggly thing that
darted around the tray hiding under whatever was nearest – we eventually got to
grips with it and identified it as a very recently hatched Blenny no more than
6 or 7mm long. What a find!
Most of the usual suspects were found, Pod and Common Razor
Shells, Prickly and Common Cockles, Banded Wedge Shells, Rayed Trough Shells,
and many more until one young girl showed us a larger than usual specimen of
Iceland Cyprine and they are usually pretty big! But her success was short
lived as another young lady brought us an enormous and very fresh Edible Oyster
– great news and probably find of the year! What a beauty as a certain
fisherman used to say...probably still does.
The sharp, undamaged frills show this specimen to be a fesh
one and not one that has been rolling around in the tide for a good
while...soooo there must be a small population out there somewhere...which is
good.
A mystery item was brought to us to identify and it remains
very much a mystery, possibly some a skull from some species of fish or other?
Never seen anything quite like it in all our born days! Our marine biologist guru DB had a tentative guess at the skull of a Scorpion Fish.
Some of the pots hold anemones of various species and we
wanted to show some of the older children ‘Nemo’s home’ but instead found a
couple of live Sand Mason Worms, their cases are washed up by the million but
we’ve never seen live ones at the top of the beach before even the ‘highest’
ones are only normally exposed by the very lowest low tides.
All most very excellent.
A lunchtime peer through the scope was nowhere near as
productive with just a number of distant terns and one very distant Gannet to
show for our efforts.
Where to next? Day off tomorrow to head back down the motorway to see m'laddo in hossy so there's a very good chance the moff trap will go on overnight.
In the meantime let us know what's all washed up in your outback.
