The Safari met up with IH who drove us down to Southampton for a watery safari aboard the good ship Borealis as part of the Ocean Wildlife Encounters team of wildlife guides helping the guests enjoy and identify the marine life seen from the ship during the week's cruise. Our route would be a circumnavigation of Great Britain (the geographic island) and visits to the Outer Hebrides and Shetland (not part of the geographic Great Britain).
Before we boarded the ship we had a day to fill down on the south coast, where better to spend it than the RSPB's fabulous Arne reserve full of crazy invertebrates, all the UK's species of reptiles and some great birds we don't see up north and a site neither of us have visited before. We got our reserve map and some directions of what to look for where from the very helpful staff at the reception area and set off full of eager anticipation of what the day might hold. what unusual (for us) wildlife would we find?
Blackbirds and
Blackcaps sang as we ventured down the path, nothing unusual so far then. A small bird on the path in front of us caught our attention, it seemed to be pecking at something - a
Coal Tit, again not unusual. BUT what it was doing was deffo unusual and something we'd not heard of before, the thing it was pecking at wasn't a substantial caterpillar but a pile of
Fox droppings. No, it wasn't eating it but teasing out hair presumably to line its nearby nest. We've not seen that before and nor had we even heard of such behaviour before. That's the wonder of nature there's always something new to discover and even 'commonplace' species can surprise you.
By now any hint of sunshine was disappearing and a cool wind started to blow probably ruling out any chance of finding any reptiles although we did keep our eyes peeled along the sides of the paths for
Adders and
Common Lizards in the
Bracken. Sadly we had no joy.
We wandered up to the viewpoint to get our bearings and have a scan of the habitats we were about to traverse. Among the Heather on the heathland we came across a couple of day flying moths which we didn't recognise. They turned out to be a species we don't see around Base Camp nor our regular safari haunts, Common Heath.
Lunch was taken in the hide overlooking Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island, no we couldn't see their famous
Red Squirrels from there. We did however see a different unusual (for us) mammal, a couple of
Sika Deer were sheltering under the woodland fringe very distantly across the saltmarsh to our left. Another top spot by IH. There wasn't much birdlife on offer in the creeks below us but a couple of keen youngsters told us they'd seen a tern further out, they though it might have been a
Sandwich Tern, but did they know there's been a
Forster's Tern from America in the area for quite some time? Another birder told us they'd seen one of the re-introduced
White Tailed Eagles earlier in the morning. We had to make do with a pair of
Ravens on the beach.
The weather deteriorated as we continued our stroll around the reserve, getting colder and duller all the time. Hearing a
Cuckoo brightened our spirits but everything else was keeping well hidden. And then the rain started and by heck did it come down! We made it to the cafe just in time to avoid a severe soaking. The next hour and more was enjoyed looking out of the windows while drinking hot brews washed down with ice cream. It wasn't all bad though, a
Cuckoo flew right over our cafe window and we had five species of finches visiting the feeders, there may have been six but when we stood outside the check for
Lesser Redpolls, possibly seen from inside, none showed up. Eventually the rain stopped and we headed to the extensive heathlands were we heard a
Woodlark flying overhead and a little later one singing. We caught up with the keen youngsters who tried their best to get us onto a
Dartford Warbler that they'd found not long earlier. It wasn't to be but eagle eyed IH did return the favour by getting them onto a pair of
Woodlarks on the other side of the path. We were too early in the day, and possibly the tear, for any
Nightjars to be on the wing but the area in front of us did look bob on for them. There wasn't much else about apart from a couple of
Stonechats and after the rain a lot of
Biting Midges! So back to Southampton it was before the rain started again.
Somewhat annoyingly we joined the ship the following lunchtime (always a good time to board a cruise ship) in lovely sunshine - why couldn't it have been like that yesterday?? We met up with the other half of our OWE team, MK and SB.
Once introductions, lunch and ship's formalities were over it was time to don our 'uniforms', take up postion on deck and make ourselves known to the guests. The first thing we noticed was the huge number of small Ladybirds all over the back, sorry stern - we have be all nautical now - of the ship. Most of them appeared to be 7-Spot Ladybirds and they had probably been attracted to the ship's lights overnight. A couple of dozen Brent Geese were on the mudflats on the other side of the river and we also saw Peregrine, Raven, IH found a Wheatear and one of the guests had seen an Osprey...not bad before casting off!
Mid-afternoon we set sail down the Solent with clear skies, warm sunshine, a calm sea and a sackful of eager anticipation of what the voyage might bring.
We got out on deck early in the morning to thick fog! A full 'sea day' like this wouldn't be much cop!!!Thanfully it soon cleared and we began to see numbers of Gannets, Manx Searwaters
and
Fulmars. We had three bucket list 'species' to see while aboard. we missed the first of these which was seen from during breakfast from the restaurant,
Basking Shark - dohh would have been a Lifer! The calm sea was a boon for spotting and we soon started seeing
Common Dolphins and
Minke Whales. We almost got a pic of the latter. How can you miss something so big?
The lack of wind wasn't conducive to seabirds flying, they like wind they can glide rather than waste energy flapping so many of them were just loafing around chilling out in the sunshine on the sea. A pair of Gannets even used the down time to do a bit of courting
Kittiwakes have been having a hard time recently with
Avian Flu taking a severe toll on them and climate change changing the distribution of their favoured prey species making them harder to find so it was good to see some of last year's youngsters among the adults.
Some off the Cornish coast in deep hazy mist we passed a pirate ship, or is it just a Spanish galleon?
Further into the Celtic Sea we came across large rafts of becalmed
Manx Shearwaterswhich had no option but to scutter out of our way as we got too close
Steaming northwards between Pembrokeshire and the Irish coast a small pod of
Common Dolphins came towards us.
After reviewing these shots we realised we'd be better with the shorter lens for cetaceans, particularly fast moving ones like these. The field of view on the long lens was just too narrow to be able to keep finding them when they were close enough to fill the frame, the shorter lens with its wider field of view would have stuck with them and given the opportunity to see more of the spread out pod although given a smaller image when they were closer...that was our theory, would it work? We hoped so and as we travelled on towards the southern tip of the Isle of Man we had plenty of guests eagerly watching the sea for any hint of action.
Unfortunately we had no more cetacean sightings just more becalmed seabirds.
The sun set among developing Mammatus clouds at the end of a grand day at sea.
The day's final tally was 38 Common Dolphins, 12 Minke Whales, 4 Grey Seals, 3 Harbour Porpoises, 3 Bottlenose Dolphins and 2 Risso’s Dolphins (which we missed) plus the Basking Shark and two stowaways, a Collared Dove and a Chiffchaff.
The following morning we awoke parked up in Belfast lough.
Right next door to the RSPB's Window on Wildlife reserve and a bloody huuuggge wind turbine rigging ship.
Where to next? Belfast and beyond coming up in Part 2.
In the meantime let us know who's come over all becalmed in your outback.
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