Scilly Isles – Annet and St Agnes

July 26, 2017 / nrowberry / 2 Comments

So this is the final blog post from our trip to the Scilly Isles – this time visiting both Annet and St Agnes. In terms of wildlife, this is maybe saving the best until last – that is if you like puffins! If you’re not into puffins, maybe better to stop reading now. There are a lot of photos in this post, but it could have been worse. We took over 600 that day alone, but I’ve managed to whittle them down to 24!

This was a two island trip – we spent an hour or so boating around Annet before being dropped off on St Agnes to be picked up again a few hours later. The whole island of Annet is a bird sanctuary and an important breeding ground for seabirds. Because of this we were not allowed to land on Annet, so we could only view the birds from the boat. This wasn’t a problem, as in many ways, watching the birds from the boat was the best way to see them.

As befits a bird reserve, there were birds everywhere. One of the prettiest species we saw was the Common Tern. When you see them flying it’s fairly obvious why they are also sometimes known as the Sea Swallow.

We’d had drama on a previous boat trip when a gull killed a cormorant. This time we saw a gull meet its match with a crow. I don’t know if the gull was trying to catch the crow or the crow was mobbing the gull, but in the end they both gave up and flew off.

Of course the birds we all really wanted to see were the puffins. We’d feared we might be too late in the season, as they move away from the coast after breeding and head out to sea. But we were in luck and we saw puffins – loads of them! Chris and I got a bit carried away taking photographs, but who could resist with puffins all around.

At first we saw them near their burrows on the low cliffs of Annet.

Seeing them by their burrows was great, but then they started flying and it just got better and better. They flew all around the boat, up to a dozen at any one time. When trying to take a photo you realise just how small and how fast they really are – it’s not easy focussing from a bobbing boat, but take enough photos and at least some turn out OK!

At first we only managed fairly distant shots, but then Chris must have got his eye in and started getting better close up ones.

Like a lot of iconic wildlife, when you see them close up they can seem almost too good to be true – but they are absolutely beautiful birds and it was a dream come true to see them like this.

After flying around for a bit they started to land on the water. So again after many, many fuzzy attempts, here are a few of the best ones of them bobbing about.

Puffins rely extensively on sandeels for much of their diet and one of the classic images of them is with a mouthful of fish. At first I thought we’d not got a photo of this, but after a second trawl through our pics, I found I’d got one – and it was actually one of my photos for a change – hence the slightly blurry effect! Still I was very happy to get a picture of a puffin with his lunch.

After watching them fly and swim around for a bit, our guide spotted some on a rocky outcrop and we managed to get close enough (without disturbing them) to get some more photos.

I did try and cut back on these photos (honest), but in the end they were just too adorable to watch – so here’s a few more.

We could happily have spent the whole day watching the puffins, but our boat eventually took us on to St Agnes. Not that this was a bad thing either, because St Agnes was lovely too. The Turks Head pub was just as I remembered it from childhood (I started young!) and we had an excellent lunch there sitting out by the sea. The pub is in the perfect location, just a few yards from the quay.

As with all the islands, there are beautiful views in all directions.

After an excellent pub lunch, we took a stroll across the sandbar to Gugh island, which is only accessible on foot at low tide. I’ve always fancied staying on an island like that, where you are completely cut off when the tide comes in. There weren’t many houses on Gugh, but plenty of wildlife. This male stonechat was a nice addition to the day’s photos.

We headed back to St Agnes (thankfully we’d judged the tide OK and not got cut off) and continued round the island. We found a lovely café (Coastguard Café) with yet more amazing views and equally good cream teas. We had one very delightful teatime companion – a particularly inquisitive (i.e. greedy) thrush. I think it was a Song Thrush. We saw loads of thrushes on the Scilly Isles – way more than we ever see at home, there must be something about the islands that agrees with them (besides the scones).

So that’s it for our trip to the Scilly Isles. 1 week, 5 boat trips, half a dozen pubs, loads of seals, butterflies, birds and beaches and 1 beautiful wasp. And it still felt like we’d only scratched the surface of what there was to see and do. I know I’m probably sounding like an advert for the Scillies, but I can’t recommend the islands enough. If you are into wildlife like us, then they are heaven, but even if you’re not so nature obsessed, the stunning scenery, sunny weather and friendly people still make them a great place to visit. We are already looking forward to going back.

The final photo from our whole Scilly Isles trip has to be this little ornamental duck, which was sitting on the wall outside our accommodation. Although it looks nothing like a real bird, every time we walked passed it, we all did a double take. Maybe we’ve spent too long looking for wildlife everywhere, or maybe we just want to believe there is wildlife everywhere. Either way, I grew quite fond of this Iittle duck and it will always remind me of a very happy holiday.

Scilly Isles – St Martin’s

July 25, 2017 / nrowberry / 1 Comment

The penultimate blog from our trip to the Scilly Isles – this time a splendid day out on St Martin’s. We caught the 10:15 boat from St Mary’s which dropped us off at Higher Town. We then had most of the day to meander our way up St Martin’s to Lower Town where the boat picked us up for the return journey.

Rather than heading straight for Lower Town we decided to explore the eastern side of the island a bit, partly because this beach (Par Beach) looked so fantastic.

The beach was so tempting in fact that I did something I haven’t done for years – went for a swim in the sea! Admittedly it was a very short swim as it was damn cold, but my feet left the bottom and I was afloat, so it definitely counts as a swim!

As with all the islands there were stunning views aplenty. I love the mixture of sandy beaches and rocky shores – something for everyone and everything as the variety must be great for wildlife.

For much of our walk we didn’t see anyone, just picturesque country lanes to saunter down at our own pace.

Almost every point on the island gives wonderful vistas of other islands. I tried doing one of my shaky video clips to try and convey it – not sure it does the view justice though.

St Martin’s has an interesting Daymark at its highest point that can be seen from the mainland. Although it looks quite modern it was apparently erected in 1683 (thanks to Wikipedia for that fact of the day!)

One of the highlights for us wherever we go is always finding a good pub and in the Seven Stones Inn we found a cracker! A cold beer, a huge sandwich and friendly staff – what more could you want?

Actually you could want a stunning view too – and I don’t think we’ve ever had a better pub view than this one looking out to sea.!

And as if all that wasn’t perfect enough, an insect landed on our table that I’ve been wanting to photograph for ages – a ruby-tailed wasp. These wasps are tiny and are almost too beautiful to be real.

As usual I couldn’t resist taking photos of Small Copper butterflies – this time a pair that landed right in front of me on the path.

It was nice also though to get a bit of a moth fix in the form of a Silver Y. This is an immigrant moth, possibly arriving in Scilly on the winds from the continent.

Although there were of course plenty of seabirds on St Martin, it was nice to take some pics of more familiar garden birds. The flock of goldfinches we saw remained out of camera range, but a couple of Great Tits came close enough for a quick pic.

At one point there was a bit of a commotion amongst the small birds and they seemed to be trying to drive off a larger one. We thought at first it must have been some kind of bird of prey, but it was hard to tell from a distance. So it was a bit of a surprise when we zoomed in on the photos later to discover it was a cuckoo! The photos aren’t great, because it was quite a long way off, but they are still the best cuckoo photos we’ve ever taken! I thought from the first photo that there was perhaps something wrong with its wings as they seemed at a strange angle to the rest of the body, but apparently they do perch slightly oddly like this. There was certainly nothing wrong with its wings when it took off.

So that was St Martin’s – a really beautiful island that was possibly our favourite out of all of them. With a surprise cuckoo and ruby-tailed wasp after a perfect pub lunch, we headed back to St Mary’s very happy indeed.

Scilly Isles – Bryher

July 24, 2017 / nrowberry / 4 Comments

Continuing with our tour of the Scilly Isles, here’s the latest instalment – Bryher. Bryher is the smallest of the inhabited islands and has a special meaning to our family. My parents used to stay in the same guesthouse there every year for many years and absolutely loved the place.

Like all the Scilly Isles you can’t move for beautiful beaches and picturesque views. Bryher is perhaps quieter and less developed than some of the other islands and has a lovely peaceful quality (not that the other islands are exactly noisy!)

Like the other islands too, most of the fields tend to be small with high hedges to provide protection against the wind. It makes for very attractive views compared to high intensity large farms on the mainland.

Someone on the island must have been into a bit of rock art as there were lots of these neat piles of stones balanced around the Porth bays (one of which is delightfully named Stinking Porth!)

Birds were of course plentiful everywhere. It was nice to add the Herring Gull to our tally of seabirds for the trip. I’m sure we were seeing these everywhere, but this was the first time we’d got decent enough photos to get a positive ID.

Nice also to catch a photo of a Lesser Black-Backed Gull – distinguished from the Greater version by his yellow legs. (I’m learning!)

I missed the next one, but Chris spotted a Heron flying across the bay in the distance.

The ubiquitous Shags were also present (unless these are cormorants?) I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for these gawky gangly looking birds.

One bird we love and always try to photograph, although usually with limited success, is the wren. This Bryher wren though was quite obliging and posed beautifully on some lichens.

As well as getting to grips with gull identification, I was getting in a bit of a muddle with some of the smaller birds. But I’m reasonably confident that these are linnets – with a brighter coloured male (top) and a pair of females (below). Linnets have a supposedly melodious song which unfortunately meant they used to fall victim to the caged bird trade. Hopefully that is no longer the case.

I can never resist including a butterfly photo. Although Meadow Browns were by far the most common species we saw on the Scilly Isles, we also saw quite a lot of Small Coppers. We don’t get many around us in Malvern any more (we’ve only recorded them twice in our own garden), so it was lovely to see them here in decent numbers.

This final photo isn’t me going all nationalistic and flag waving, but the latest chapter in a long running bit of fun between my Dad and his Austrian friend. My parents used to holiday on Bryher for many years and made friends with another regular visitor from Austria. According to my Dad, his Austrian friend used to enjoy sitting on the same flat rock every day enjoying the scenery of Bryher. One year my Dad planted a small flag and sent a photo to his Austrian friend saying he had “claimed” the rock for Britain. The following year his friend sent another photo back with an Austrian flag, “claiming” it back for Austria. My sister and I thought it would be fun to claim it back again. Unfortunately we only had a rough description of where the rock was – and there are a lot of flat rocks around Bryher! So we’ve no idea whether we’ve reclaimed the right rock, but hopefully our Austrian friend will appreciate the effort and perhaps send us a photo back?

Scilly Isles – Eastern Isles

July 23, 2017 / nrowberry / 3 Comments

Next instalment on our recent trip to the Scilly Isles. This time we were out on a glass bottom boat tour of the Eastern Isles – small uninhabited islands with unusual names like Little Arthur and Great Ganilly. There were lots of interesting rock formations around, all covered with lichens, which provided sufficient interest until we got to the wildlife.

As it turned out we didn’t actually see very much through the glass bottom (a few jellyfish and a lot of seaweed), but what we saw all around more than made up for it. Most of our time was spent watching seals – Grey Seals to be precise. The Scilly Isles have a large and nationally important colony of grey seals and we were lucky enough to see quite a few on our trip. At first we just glimpsed them bobbing about in the water, watching us as much as we were watching them.

But our guide (and skipper) soon spotted one hauled out on a rock. He identified it as a fully grown adult male grey seal. Unfortunately it seemed to have got something stuck around its neck – perhaps old fishing gear. It didn’t seem to be causing him any problems and hopefully as he was already an adult he won’t grow any more to cause it to tighten around his neck. Chris and I both took loads of photos – he seems to have got the knack of taking photos from a moving boat, I don’t and most of mine were very blurry. So most if not all of these photos are his!

We continued round the various rocky outcrops that make up the Eastern Isles and eventually spotted another seal hauled out. All the seals seemed to be quite used to the boat and tourists and look unfazed by our visit.

We had seen photos online of seals swimming under the boat so you could see them through the glass bottom. One of the reasons why we were maybe not lucky enough to see this was the presence of a group of snorkelers. The snorkelers were also there to see the seals and the seals in turn were much more interested in the people in the water than coming over to our boat. They were swimming all around the snorkelers – spot the odd one out in the photo below!

Maybe next time we go to Scilly we could try the snorkelling thing ourselves – it must be amazing to swim with them and they clearly weren’t bothered, just curious.

As you’d expect of a boat tour around any part of the Scilly Isles – seabirds were abundant. Fairly early on a flock of oystercatchers took off over the boat. Not easy to get decent photos of moving birds from a moving boat!

We got one of our few sightings of Fulmars while on this trip, beautiful birds albeit with slightly odd looking beaks.

There were quite a few Great Black-Backed Gulls around. I must admit before this trip I’d never been able to tell the different gull species apart. While still far from expert, I am starting to learn a few things. So I’m fairly sure this is the Great Black-Backed, since it was a large gull with pink legs, a yellow beak with red dot and of course a black back! (As always though happy to be corrected if I’ve got it wrong!)

While we were there, one of these gulls caught and killed a shag. Chris managed to get a photo of the gull with its victim and another shag looking on (hope it wasn’t his or her mate). The gulls of course have to eat too, so although it was a bit sad to witness, it is all part and parcel of life. The unfortunate final outcome though was that the gull then managed to drop the dead shag down amongst the rocks, where it didn’t seem to be able to reach it. So the poor thing died for nothing – although I suppose something else probably ate it in the end.

The biggest surprise of this boat trip came in the shape of birds I’d never associated with the sea – Peregrine Falcons! Our guide mentioned that there was a pair nesting with chicks on one of the islands, but we hadn’t really expected to see them. But sure enough they were there. We couldn’t get a proper look at the adults but the two chicks were clearly visible sitting on rocks waiting for the next feed. They were quite high up and we couldn’t get very close, but it was still lovely to see.

Scilly Isles – St Mary’s

July 21, 2017July 24, 2017 / nrowberry / 6 Comments

After the rush of 30 Days Wild in June, I thought July would be a quiet month and I’d be able to blog at a leisurely pace. Somehow that doesn’t seem to have happened and we are now two thirds through the month! The good news is that we managed to squeeze in a fantastic holiday in the beautiful Scilly Isles. We took so many photos (over 2000!) that I’ll split them (not all of them obviously!) into blog posts for the different islands we visited.

So first up are some of the many things we saw on the main island – St Mary’s. We were staying on St Mary’s, so spent our first full day getting to know it (via some crazy golf buggy driving thanks to my brother-in-law), before taking boat trips to the other islands later in the week.

The Scilly Isles are off the southern tip of Cornwall and have a much more tropical climate than we get back home in Malvern. This was immediately apparent from the lush vegetation – palm trees, giant Echiums and Agapanthus everywhere.

The rocky walls were generally covered in all manner of stunning flowers and the hedgerows were overflowing.

No idea what these massive yellow and orange flowers were, but they were like pina coladas hanging everywhere. (now known to be Angel’s Trumpets or Brugmansia sanguinea, thanks to Neil Anderson and Jo at Me and My Hats)

As we trundled around St Mary’s at the breakneck speed of 12mph on the buggy, the views were pretty much stunning from all angles. Beautiful beaches and some amazing rock formations.

I tried one of my usual shaky videos to give some idea of the panorama of islands all around us:

Normally Chris and I focus on the natural history, but the Scilly Isles have been inhabited since Neolithic times, so it would have been rude not to pay a visit to at least one site. This is Halangy Down; a village inhabited from the Iron Age through to the early Medieval period when it was abandoned as the area got buried in sand.

And this is me inside Bant’s Carn – a 4000 year old burial chamber, just up the hill from the ancient village.

Fascinating as the ancient history is, Chris and I always end up looking for the wildlife. The islands are of course full of birds, who have not only adapted to island life but to tourist life as well. The sparrows in particular had learnt that tourists were easy picking and wherever we went to eat they were there – greedy opportunists, making the most of us greedy visitors. So here I am doing my sparrow whispering bit – sacrificing a bit of my lunch to my new friends. If only I could get the robin on our allotment to do the same, I’d be very happy.

Of course we saw lots of other birds besides the sparrows. First new species for us was this Rock Pipit seen down on the shore near the Old Town area – please someone tell me if this is actually just another sparrow!

We saw lots of our perennial favourites – oystercatchers. I’m not sure I’d ever noticed before how disproportionately long their beaks are – although they are clearly well evolved to successfully fill the biological niche that would require such a beak!

We got this one fleeting glimpse of a gannet, although they do occur all round the islands.

I always struggle to tell cormorants from shags, but apparently the latter are much more common on the Scillies. Having said that I think this one seen bobbing about in the water just out of decent camera range was a cormorant.

Gulls were of course present pretty much everywhere. This I think is a Great Black-Backed Gull – the largest gull in the world. The Scilly Isles have over 10% of the UK’s breeding population of this gull. Apparently they can swallow puffins whole, but this one was making do with pecking at a crab shell it had probably nicked from a local restaurant.

Birds may be great, but we can’t go anywhere without looking for insects. Possibly the most interesting ones we saw on St Mary’s were these Ichneumon wasps (Heteropelma amictum – thanks to Bob on Twitter for the ID) – which were fairly common lumbering around the bracken with their yellow back legs dangling behind them.

I had been tempted to take the moth trap to the Scillies, but common sense prevailed and I was reduced to looking for day flying ones. Fortunately six spot burnett moths were sufficiently common around the islands to satisfy the mothy nerd in me.

As St Mary’s is the main island and therefore the most populous, we hadn’t really expected to see too much wildlife. We thought St Mary’s would be our foodie base and we’d use the outer islands for serious wildlife watching. But without really looking we stumbled upon loads of plants and animals that caught our interest – most of which was accessible from a golf buggy. Who knows what we might have seen if we’d got out and explored on foot!

More soon, when I’ve ploughed through the next 500 or so photos from our trip to the Scilly Isles! xx

30 Days Wild – Day 29

June 29, 2016 / nrowberry / Leave a comment

Day 29 of 30 Days Wild and we were down on the beach enjoying the seaside atmosphere. First up a brunch sitting outside at a café that we’ve been going to for about 30 years – think the menu was pretty much the same as it had been all those years ago too, although there was now a Specials board with exotica like Houmous wraps!

We sat outside and were joined by a greedy flock of starlings, who clearly understood café culture. The adults were initiating the young ones into the delights of eating alfresco and watched us keenly to see if we were going to give them anything. They had competition from a couple of seagulls, but thankfully the gulls didn’t actually join us on the chairs like the starlings did.

The view out to sea was the same as I remembered too. Oil supply vessels sitting out at sea, were lined along the horizon.

The North-East of Scotland has miles of sandy beaches stretching past Aberdeen up into the sand dunes further north. The tide was in while we were there, so you can’t really see the extent of the sand from the photos. We were lucky in that the sun was shining and we had more or less blue skies, with just a bit of a breeze to liven up the waves.

Chris risked getting soaked to try and get some close up shots of the spray splashing up over the seawall, while I stayed safe and dry further up the steps!

I had thought we might go really wild and go for a paddle, but then I remembered just how cold the North Sea is and how much I really hate getting sand between my toes. In the end I guess we were both just Too Lazy to Paddle!

We headed back into town through the harbour. Aberdeen is a big industrial harbour – all concrete and metal. But even here we found some unexpected delights. These orchids were thriving between the fence and these huge rusty metal chain links. A little splash of colour of nature fighting back.

Today was a much more relaxed, lazy day than some of our previous ones and it was really nice just to chill out down at the beach and recharge out batteries.

And finally the second last weed in 30 Lazy Garden Weeds – the Ivy Leaved Toadflax. This pretty little flower grows out of our walls at home. For some reason the name Toadflax makes me think of the names of Hobbits in Lord of the Rings, or of some of the rabbits in Watership Down (no idea if the name Toadflax was actually used in either of these of course). The flowers are like little purpley blue snap dragons. They have a clever mechanism whereby they face the sun until they have been fertilised and then they face back to the wall, so that the seeds when they form get embedded in cracks more easily. A clever little plant!

30 Days Wild – Day 28

June 28, 2016 / nrowberry / Leave a comment

Day 28 of 30 Days Wild and we had a fantastic day at an RSPB nature reserve – Fowlsheugh. Fowlsheugh is an amazing cliff top reserve and one giant seabird colony. So we went knowing that we’d see a few birds – but I have never seen anything like it. The cliffs were absolutely covered – just a moving mass of wings and beaks. It is a completely breath-taking spectacle (although to be honest the smell was pretty breath-taking too for different reasons!)

The sound hits you first – a complete cacophony of bird calls. Impossible for beginners like us to pick out individual species, but no doubt others could do better. The sound clip gives a brief idea of what it was like, although you really needed to be there to experience it all around you.

The cliffs were choc-a-bloc with seabirds of all shapes and sizes – here’s just one small portion of one colony.

Our first sight of birds were these gulls flying pretty much at eye level with us (or eye level with normal heighted people like Chris) along the edge of the cliffs. I think the first one is a Herring Gull and the second possibly a Kittiwake.

The next one sitting on its nest I’m fairly sure is a Herring Gull, with a red mark on its beak.

This next one I think is a Fulmar with its tube like nose.

This next one we think is a Guillemot launching itself off the cliffs. There were hundreds if not thousands of these beautiful birds.

I think the next image shows two Guillemot adults with a chick (with a Razorbill in the background).

The next one is a Razorbill adult on the cliff edge.

We were really pleased to spot some Razorbill chicks like this one below.

Kittiwakes were all around us. Being novices when it comes to seabird identification, we weren’t always sure what we were looking at, but we think this was a Kittiwake with a chick.

But lovely as all these seabirds were, I must admit we went to Fowlsheugh hoping to see one particular species – the Puffin. And we were in luck! There weren’t many, but they were there. Irresistible cheeky little puffin faces and feet – it was actually the feet we spotted first.

The final treat Fowlsheugh had for us was a Yellow Hammer, on the way back to the car – singing its socks off on this rock.

As if our day hadn’t been full enough seabird spotting, we decided to indulge my inner marine biologist and stop at a rocky shore to do a bit of rock-pooling as well. We didn’t have very much time, but fortunately we weren’t far from some of my old stomping grounds, so I knew where to find some decent pools. So here is a whistle stop tour of some of the common species from a rocky shore in Scotland. First up, just a common or garden Winkle (Littorina littoralis).

Next up a Dog Whelk (Nucella lapillus) – I spent a lot of time in previous working incarnations studying dog whelks. These unfortunate molluscs are affected by tributyltin in anti-fouling paints – it makes female dog whelks develop male characteristics – a condition known as imposex. One of my jobs used to be to monitor this, as the state of the dog whelk population was indicative of wider issues due to these paints. So it was a real trip down memory lane today to see healthy populations of these little snails.

The rockpools were of course full of anemones and after a bit of hunting we found this one extended rather than looking like a jelly blob!

Hermit crabs have always been a rockpool favourite and we spent a lot of time trying to get this one to show himself out of his shell.

And finally one of his crustacean relatives – a fairly puny sized shore crab.

I must admit it was a bit self indulgent dragging Chris round the rockpools and getting him to photograph things that I used to do for a living. But he did get a pint at the end of it, so I’m guessing all is forgiven!

And lastly the latest weed in 30 Lazy Garden Weeds – Cleavers or stickybuds, or goosegrass or sticky willy. This weed must have more common names than any other. Whatever you call it, it is instantly recognisable, with its Velcro like sticky stems and little round burrs that stick to anything that moves past them – animals or clothing! Again I have a fondness for this one, purely because it reminds me of childhood and my Mum complaining when we came in covered in the sticky balls. I know it’s a nuisance to many gardeners, but as are all weeds, it is safe in our garden!

30 Days Wild – Day 27

June 27, 2016 / nrowberry / Leave a comment

Day 27 of 30 Days Wild and we’re by the sea. It’s been ages since we’ve seen the sea – we used to live on the coast and I used to be a marine biologist, so it’s really good to be back listening to the waves and smelling the sea air! I’d forgotten about the wind though – bracing!

When you haven’t seen the sea for a while, even watching the waves holds a lazy attraction. I could sit and watch them coming in for ages. I must admit part of me would have liked a great big storm, with waves crashing dramatically, but gentle lapping was all they were doing today.

I definitely knew I’d been away from the sea for too long, when I got all excited at my first sight of limpets, barnacles and seaweed. I used to spend a large part of my working life identifying things like this. Now I’m happy to just admire them without stressing over exactly which Fucus species it is!

I love the way the sandstone walls have become pitted and carved by the sea breeze and salt air. There’s something really tactile about the texture of the stone.

We were really at the edge of a harbour today, so not ideal for diversity of plantlife, but we did spot this pretty little yellow succulent growing out of the rocks – I suspect it is some kind of Sedum, but can’t be sure.

The birds were of course the highlight of this morning’s walk (for Chris at least who didn’t get quite so excited by the limpets as I did!) As always there were ducks – they seem to be everywhere we go at the moment. I love the way they sail across the water, completely unfazed by the waves.

Gulls were inevitably flying around – there are quite a lot of food outlets here, so easy picking for greedy gulls. It was a bit early for the tourists to be dropping food though, so the gulls weren’t really landing. But Chris managed to get this nice shot of one flying over us – presumably checking us out as potential food sources.

Our favourite though was this Tern – we think a Common Tern. It was stunningly graceful flying round the little harbour, diving into the water for fish. Its aerial acrobatics were truly amazing – it turned in the air so fast and with such precision – breathtaking to watch.

We only had time for a short walk today on a busy schedule, but hopefully I’ll be able to indulge my inner marine biologist a bit more tomorrow!

And finally today’s weed for 30 Lazy Garden Weeds is Creeping Jenny. This little weed has, as its name suggests, a creeping habit and spreads horizontally around the garden. If you’re not bothered about a tidy garden (we certainly are not) then it’s actually very good at just providing ground cover. The flowers are a lovely bright yellow and it seems much better to let this fill an empty patch than use imported and expensive plants to do the same job.

	Stephen Spencer on Luring an Emperor
	nrowberry on Luring an Emperor
	Stephen Spencer on Luring an Emperor
	nrowberry on Luring an Emperor
	Thomas on Luring an Emperor

Too Lazy To Weed

The not so ordinary wildlife of an ordinary (but scruffy) garden

Marine