Sunday stroll: Portland Bill

Jan24

Today we went for a walk at Portland Bill, the most southerly point on the Isle of Portland. The Isle of Portland is a strange place, hanging off the bottom of Chesil Beach like a stony teardrop. The island is an outcrop of Jurassic limestone which has been valued as a building stone for centuries. If you know the Tower of London: that’s Portland Stone. And St Paul’s Cathedral. And Buckingham Palace. And the United Nations headquarters building in New York City. And the Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand. I could go on …

The Isle of Portland seen from Ringstead Bay on a sunny summer's day. To the right of the photo is Weymouth.

The Isle of Portland seen from Ringstead Bay on a sunny summer’s day in 2012. To the right of the photo is Wyke Regis, near Weymouth. Chesil Beach – a narrow spit of land, or tombolo – joins the two.

Quarrying has created a weird and atmospheric landscape on the island, with worked-out quarries and others that are still in use, and piles of discarded, sub-standard stone and workings piled in heaps and dumped over the edges of the high cliffs.

At the southerly end of the island is Portland Bill, with its two lighthouses to warn ships of the rocks and the deadly currents – the Race – where the water of the English Channel churns around the tip of the island in a furious boiling wash of water. Pulpit Rock is all that remains of a stone arch that was cut away by quarrymen.

Portland Bill lighthouse, and the other lighthouse (once the home of Marie Stopes) visible in the mid distance.

The Trinity House Obelisk, a daymarker to warn shipping off the coast during the day. All the land in the foreground is made ground, waste dumped by the quarrymen in centuries past.

Pulpit Rock.

It was a mild and windy day, and we scrambled down to a sea ledge to have a look at the stone and the seascape better.

Fossiliferous limestone exposed on the ledge by Pulpit Rock.

Dumped rejected stone near Pulpit Rock. The black dot on the water is a cormorant - we watched it repeatedly dive for food.

Dumped, rejected stone on a waste heap near Pulpit Rock. The black dot on the water is a cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) – we watched it repeatedly dive for food.

Earlier in the day we had been in Weymouth looking for jewellery goodies for my Etsy shop, and met this fellow in the car park:

Herring gull on the bonnet of our car in Weymouth.

Herring gull (Larus argentatus) on the bonnet of our car in Weymouth.

Rings that remind me of things: Part 6

Jan18

Part six of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Octopus tentacle. Photo by Sanja B.

Part 1 was a ring that reminded me of an Iron Age hillfort, Part 2 was a ring that reminded me of an alien spaceship, Part 3 was a ring that reminded me of a cream horn, Part 4 was a ring that reminded me of a radio telescope, and Part 5 was a ring that reminded me of Noah’s Ark.

27 February 2016 UPDATE: The ring has now sold. Sorry!

A pied male blackbird

Jan17

Today we saw a very unusual bird – a male blackbird (Turdus merula) with lots of white on his body, giving him a beautiful pied appearance.

The photos aren’t very good because I had my not-very-sophisticated camera on zoom and was photographing through a window.

This is what a male blackbird should look like:

Male blackbird. Photo by Sannse.

I’m hoping our pied visitor will come back and that we can get some better photos of him.

January 2018 UPDATE: We have another pied male blackbird.

The Gävle Goat 2015

Dec1

It’s back! The Gävle Goat has returned, standing tall in the town of Gävle in eastern Sweden. This giant straw Yule Goat is erected every year at Advent, and hopefully survives until it is dismantled a few days after Christmas.

The Gavle Goat on its webcam, 13:27 local time, 1 December 2015.

The Gävle Goat on its webcam, 13:27 local time, 1 December 2015.

Last year’s Goat survived unscathed, and spent the early part of 2015 in China to help celebrate the Chinese Year of the Goat.

So far this year’s goat hasn’t been burned down … time will tell!

Here’s a photo of the Goat on 29 November, undergoing final primping before his unveiling later that evening:

Lovely, isn’t he?

You can keep an eye on the Goat’s progress on his dedicated webcam. And this being the age of social media, of course the Goat has a blog and a Twitter account.

The song thrush sings again

Nov12

One of the joys of the yearly round is hearing the song thrush (Turdus philomelos) resume its gorgeous song in late autumn.

Song thrush (Turdus philomelos). Photo by Pavrabec.

Thrushes sing gloriously throughout the summer until about July. And then they stop. I have never noticed the exact date when they stop singing. It’s always easier to notice when something starts – the first swallows appear, or the first brimstones, or the first crickets chirr – but it’s always harder to pin down when something ceases. Usually, it’s a case of thinking, ‘Hmm, I don’t remember hearing the thrush for a few days.’ And then you realise it’s stopped singing. I don’t know enough about the life cycle of the thrush to know why this cessation of song should be, but I imagine it’s something to do with singing for a mate and establishing and maintaining territory. Once the breeding season is over I guess this becomes unnecessary. And so the song stops.

But hurrah! Yesterday, Remembrance Day, as I was walking up to the post office in the afternoon, I heard the song for the first time. Like an old friend I’d missed, it was lovely to be reacquainted, and it lifted my heart, as it always does.

An elephant up our lane

Sep27

Last Thursday while walking up our lane I saw Alfie, one of the neighbourhood cats, with his nose deep in a sedge plant, clearly on the hunt. I wondered if he was after a mouse or some similar small critter, and bobbed down to have a look. At first glance, from the head of it and the way it was rearing up, it looked like a small snake, but I then realised it was an elephant hawk moth caterpillar (Deilephila elpenor). These are huge caterpillars, and I guess the moths are named after their caterpillars’ similarity to an elephant’s trunk.

800px-Deilephila_elpenor_Weibchen_Saarland_003

Elephant hawk moth. Photo by Orchi.

As a defence mechanism, the caterpillar will rear up on its front legs. It did it to me again as I was holding it: it’s quite impressive! The caterpillars overwinter as chrysalids in leaf debris on the ground, and metamorphose into their adult moth form in May the following year.

The caterpillars feed on willowherbs (Epilobium) and bedstraws (Galium), such as Galium verum (Lady’s bedstraw), and have been known to feed on fuschias as well. None of these grow up our lane so I’m not sure what the caterpillar was feeding on, or whether it was looking for somewhere to overwinter. Interestingly, last year Chap rescued another elephant hawk moth caterpillar from Alfie at about the same spot. Both times we put the caterpillar in among our densely-planted and sheltered flower beds, and hoped that they would be able to successfully overwinter there.

Wildlife Trust information on elephant hawk moths

UK Moths information on elephant hawk moths

Someone needs a pedicure …

Sep19

Ballou, to be precise:

We have bank voles (Myodes glareolus) living in our lawn and in our flower beds, and this is the result of Ballou’s particularly vigorous attempt at excavating one out of the lawn.

(The little critter got away, I’m pleased to report).

Animals riding other animals

Sep17

News today of another animal hitchhiker: a seal on a humpback whale off the coast of Australia:

A seal hitching a ride on a humpback whale. Photo by Robyn Malcolm.

This follows on from the weasel on the green woodpecker in England:

Weasel on a green woodpecker. Photo by Martin Le-May.

and before that, the Cape Genet riding on buffaloes and rhinoceroses in South Africa:

Cape genet on a rhinoceros.

I wrote a blog post about this last example last year, with more photos.

I think I might have to make animal hitchhikers a regular feature …

A scented bed

Sep1

Hecate sunbathing amid the marjoram today.

I think they’ve gone

Aug30

I think the house martins (Delichon urbicum) left us today, heading south on their migration to Africa. The RSPB tells me that they leave the UK in September and October, but I wonder whether we saw them leave today. Normally their flight is in loose, open groups, hunting high over the village in a wide open looping flight. At about 10 this morning Chap and I saw something very different, a tight, low flying group of maybe forty individuals flying directly to the south / south-west of us, and not returning. A couple of stragglers followed a few minutes later. I haven’t noticed any over the village since.

House martin. Photo by Ómar Runólfsson.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they have left a bit earlier than usual, as we have had a very cold and wet few weeks, more November-like that August-like.

House martins. Photo by Sean – Martin.

It reminds me of the time some years ago when I watched a group of at least a hundred house martins all settle on the sloping terracotta tiles of the roof of a nearby tall house. I was alerted to them by the terrific noise they made as a group, a lively twttering and calling that went on for a couple of hours. And then they all flew off. And that was that – they’d gone for the year. I’d never seen that behaviour before, nor have I since, and assume they were marshalling themselves before the grand depart.

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