The Safari was walking Monty along the top of Chat Alley the other morning expecting to see a Wheatear or Meadow Pipit or two and secretly hoping for something a little more exotic like a Stonechat or a, heaven forbid, Black Redstart or even a grounded Ring Ouzel. No such luck with the exotica but we did hear a couple of Meadow Pipits overhead. It was a no bins no camera dog walk and as can only happen when you're optic-less up pops a stonking male Wheatear on to the fence only a few yards in front of us...absolutely awesome; it stayed put giving ever closer views as we carefully inched forward towards it. The sort of sighting permanent memories are made of, but sadly not digital images - if we'd have had the big lens we'd have had to wind the zoom right in and still step back a few yards to get it all in the frame we were that close! Once we got as close as we dared without disturbing it we watched it testing the breeze before hopping off the fence and floating down the cliff in that most Wheateary way that they do with legs half dangling and that was the last we saw of it...well chuffed - it made our day and it wasn't even 9.30 yet! Saw our first butterfly of the year too, a Small Tortoiseshell, although we missed one at the Ring Ouzel in the park the other day.
Later in the morning we met up with GB and had a slow mooch along Fleetwood prom. The tide was out and with the weather being better than expected there were locals and Easter holidaymakers all over the place so there was virtually no wildlife on the beach at all save for a few gulls scattered here and there along some of the bigger channels.
We sat for a while on the sea wall at the Observation Tower from where we got two brief and inconclusive views of what was probably a Harbour Porpoise away to our left, a small flock of Eiders was well offshore in that direction too. As the tide rose more birds appeared, mostly small flocks of Oystercatchers heading for the 'new' shingle island and then a Ringed Plover came past close by and landed on the beach to our right. Our best sighting was a flock of a couple of hundred Knot that came from the left and landed on the advancing tide line joining a small group of Oystercatchers.
What we didn't do and perhaps should have done was take a look across the golf course behind us. From where we were sat we could hear Skylarks singing from there but learned later that there were perhaps as many as double figures of Wheatears scattered around the fairways. Still Monty was having a good run and plenty of fun and GB as out n about away from his 'puter for a good hour or so so it was mission accomplished even if we had lugged the camera all the way there and all the way back without pointing it at anything.
Yesterday we'd been invited by EP of the North West Living Seas team from the Wildlife Trust to join her as 'resident expert' on their family rockpooling event. not sure about the 'expert' bit - more knowledgeable than many on all things marine along our coast but we think we need a lot more practice before we get anything like worthy of the accolade of 'expert'.
There was a great turn out with several families coming along on a cool and blustery day. They were soon finding all manner of shells and dipping in the rockpools for creepy crawly things which were sadly lacking, the recent prolonged cold weather might have something to do with the dearth of crabs, shrimps and prawns. We only managed to spot one small Blenny darting for cover too, normally there's lots of them.
But as ever the more you look the more you see and it was evident that there were far more Beadlet Anemones than we normally see, some of them still covered by the water had their tentacles out. We gently prised one from the rock and let it grip to our hand with its millions of stinging cells. We'll post the pic at a later date when it's been downloaded from AN Other's camera. No it doesn't hurt, the stings are too small to penetrate any more than the top most layers of cells of our skin and their toxin is more for subduing microscopic plankton than 85kg mammals. Looks impressive though and is testament to how strong lots and lots and lots of tiny things can be.
While showing one group of children the difference between a Prickly Cockle and an Edible Cockle something on the wall of the adjacent rockpool caught our eye. Only a flippin Limpet! Not a massive one but not a particularly small one either - but you're thinking it's only a Limpet, rockpools all over the shop are full of them what's the big deal? Well in all the years we've been taking groups out rockpooling on this stretch of coast we've only ever seen one Limpet and we believe that was destroyed along with its habitat when the old storm water pipe was replaced with a new one a couple of years ago. This 'new' one was quite away from where the original one lived and was a totally different size anyway. Result - get in!!! That's the joy of wildlife - you really don't know what you're going to see from one day to the next, there's always a surprise waiting for you when you least expect it.
And there was another surprise to come, another family found another Limpet doubling the town's population! Another smallish one and a little nearer to where the original one lived but still definitely a different one.
Something made us wander to the pools on the south side of the slipway, maybe it was took look to see if there were any Green Shore Crabs there as there weren't any anywhere else but then as we approached the end of the pools and where the sea wall had been altered fro the new storm water pipe a little white dot caught our eye, could it be???????
Tripled the Blackpool population of Limpets in the space of half an hour - well done guys! But how many more are there if there's three we've found?????
Now this one isn't far from from where we last saw the original one - sort of directly below the chap in the pic above. But is it the same one or is it a new one? Questions questions - we'd like to think that somehow it survived the habitat annihilation caused by the rebuilding of the wall. It's certainly big enough and has that white cast we remember when we last saw it a little over three years ago. Here's some pics from 2013 - what do think, same or different?
One thing that has changed and very probably due to the old storm pipe being removed is the flora and fauna on the rockpools. The old pipe was above beach level whereas the new one is buried and that seems to have had an effect on what grows where and how much. There is certainly much less Honeycomb worm in the rockpools now as well as very little Spiral Wrack seaweed, perhaps losing the breakwater effect of the raised old pipe is causing more sand scour so some species can't get or maintain a grip on the concrete walls. A species that is doing well is the Edible Mussel. Look at the two pics above there is a sharp dividing line between the white of the Barnacles and the black of teeming millions of tiny Edible Mussels, we've never seen that here before it's a brand new phenomenon! Another surprising surprise thrown up by our wonderful nature and just begging more questions to be asked and more observations to be made. Is it just in this locality, does it occur 'round the corner' where we very rarely look, does it occur further north towards the pier again we rarely look that far. A couple of years ago there was a Shore Search survey done by students from the local marine biology course, it would be very interesting to have it done again.
Eventually the tide came in and we all had to leave the beach - happyWhere to next? A wet weekend beckons but no doubt there'll be something to see
In the meantime let us know who's providing the surprises in your outback
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