Monthly Archives: October 2021

Cornwall, Travel

Timing is everything!

Yesterday was not the right time of the year for birdwatchers to visit the Scillies — too late for migrants and not enough wind for blown-in vagrants.

But yesterday was exactly the right day to travel to the Scilly Isles — not a breath of wind, brilliant winter sunshine and water like a millpond.

So catching the train to Penzance before dawn,

we piled onto the Scillonian III with lots of other followers of the weather forecast. The islands are about 30 miles from the tip of Cornwall.

Scillonian III has been the setting for more vomiting anecdotes than any other — in any family. Frances’ last word to me was “Travel sickness pills!” William, Bill’s eldest, had undermined confidence in his turn on the school trip to the Scillies by asking about what had happened to Scillonian I and II. Indeed one had hit the rocks in 1951 but it had not sunk!

Unlike many other ships. On our outward journey Bill regaled me with tales of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, a mate of Marlborough (his hero) who lost four ships on the rocks around the Scillies in 1707, with the loss of nearly 2000 sailors. This may have been due to the problems at the time in plotting longitude, though 80 years later it was rumoured to have been due to the Navy’s failure to listen to a seaman, native to the Islands, who told them they were heading for the rocks! He was hanged for trying to incite mutiny. This may or may not have been true or may be an early example of how we edit history according to our own prejudices!

Still lots of dodgy rocks around, some of which you can see — lots you can’t.

Yesterday the islands looked tropical.

The beech was patrolled by a little platoon of ducks and one or two people were swimming without wet suits. We did see some birds:

  • Rock pipit stowaway — the only way to migrate!
  • What a surprise — a water rail — sadly deceased.
Comical turnstones jostling to get to the seaweed as the tide goes out, but they don’t like getting their feet wet so run up and down the beech with each little wave.
Back to the mainland and we see the familiar outline of the Longships lighthouse on the Carn Bras off Land’s End.
Then passing the Minack Theatre at dusk, perched on the cliffs with its muffled hardy audience — it is October!

As we head back along the south coast of Cornwall, the passengers all gather on the aft decks and despite an increasing chill, gaze as one at the mesmerising sunset. No one looking at their phone or scanning the sea for more dolphins — as man has done for ever, we watched the sun go down.

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Birds, Butterflies, Ecology, Moths, nature

The Trouble with Nature —

The trouble with Nature is that it runs away with you!

You give her, Nature that is, a small area of hillside to play with and, before you know it, she has barricaded herself in with thorny thickets and hidden earthworks, molehills under layers of slippery bracken and ankle breaking, knee jarring pitfalls made by rabbits and badgers. (Did I tell you I’ve just had a new knee.) The whole area is now dense undergrowth, criss-crossed by looping, flailing brambles and willow whips.

Ah, you say, that’s nice — good for diversity!

But is it — it’s not as simple as that!

So concerned were we that we called in an expert — Super-eco-man, a conservation hero —

Bionomic Man — Rob Mileto from Naturetrek

He’ll know what to do.

And he did — we slithered and scrambled up and down our precipitous banks as he introduced us to species of which we had been oblivious. Pleased to meet you! He showed us how to distinguish between our six common ferns, and to start to make sense of some of our mosses, not easy as they mainly have Latin names, now recorded in my roughly dried notebook — it will be fun giving them proper English names — shaggy christmas tree moss and less shaggy christmas tree moss.

Most importantly he showed us what we might lose. In our emerging woodland, already we are losing the avenues of open ground for butterflies and moths, insects and bats. The paths that remain are steep sided — like canyons through the trees without the gently sloping edges needed by butterflies and pollinating insects — there is a lot to do.

The overgrowth of bracken is alternately shading and insulating the great anthills on the sunny bank so that our ancient neighbours, the huge colonies of yellow meadow ants cannot so efficiently control their temperature as they have done for thousands of years.

Our carefully placed owl box overlooks dwindling areas of decent hunting ground for barn owls as the vole habitat is being eroded by blackthorn — probably the reason they haven’t used it of late.

These little beauties settled elsewhere.

Our mature oaks, it turns out, are only 100 years old, adolescent almost, not nearly gnarled and hollow enough to provide adequate nesting for all the bats, like the ones currently breeding in the bathroom ceiling and the pied and spotted flycatchers that come looking for nest sites every spring. Our new barn will need a large well insulated roof space to deal with the housing shortage! A new owl box is planned for the old barn and a safety rail for the swallows and martins as the roof purlins are too steep — the nests tend to fall off.

Seems I’ll have to start production again. Did you know that spotted flycatchers like to nest near buildings.

Open fronted bird boxes for flycatchers and bat boxes — earlier prototypes.

Now I’ve got to go and plan the new pond, we know exactly where to put it and its adjacent compost heap and en-suite woodpile. Our lizards need somewhere to bask with an air raid shelter, we’ve got just the rocks we need.

Seriously we found the exercise very helpful, now we realize that managing an area for wildlife is not a passive exercise. Those who think that any form of re-wilding threatens the rural lifestyle had better think again — even though we might only be cutting some of our hedges every other year (to get more berries) we will be generating lots of other activity.

Watch this space!

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