Sunday 27 June

A long overdue blog and I have no photos of the really interesting things I’ve been doing over the past couple of days. Sigh – it can be very hard to do stuff and remember to take photos. On Thursday evening I had a great boat trip around the back of Jethou and Herm and out to the Humps: good numbers of Puffin, Guillemot and Razorbill and great views, especially the Puffins who were happy to be quite close to Out The Blue. No dolphins but seven Grey Seal in the water was good to see.

On Saturday afternoon I was invited to help with ringing gull chicks on Lihou and I don’t have a single photo of this. I did get my camera out but then put it away as I was busy scribing for the ringers or looking for the young gulls. They naturally hide under the vegetation, no surprise as they would be an easy meal for a Great Black-backed Gull. When I found one, I just had to hold my hand over it and it would stay put until one of the licensed ringers could process it. The photo below is one of a Herring Gull chick which I took a couple of years ago on the cliffs. It shows their mottled grey colouring which helps to camouflage them from predators. It was interesting to listen to Trevor, Chris and John Horton (over from Alderney) discussing which species of gull chick they had cradled in their arms. It’s not easy to distinguish them and we had chicks of all three species: Herring, Lesser and Great Black-backed. They aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I do like gulls.

Today, I finally got back to the cliffs to continue the annual job of flagging the nests of the Black-backed Meadow Ant. It was misty and damp to start with when I set out from Petit Bôt so the nests were not showing a lot of activity, but then the sun came through and the ants were very busy. The area around Le Gouffre was as beautiful as ever.

Last year, Jamie Hooper found a new ant nest on the path down to the Moorings. This year, it is still doing well and has a neighbour – a new ant nest just a little further up the path. Le Gouffre is a dynamic area for the ants and is an important area in Guernsey for this near-threatened species. (More information about them in the Insect Pages of this site.)

Also on the path was a large patch of Centaury, (Centaurium erythraea). There is a species of Guernsey Centaury, but my botany knowledge does not extend that far. I rather think this must be Common Centaury.

As I walked back to the car down the wooded valley of Petit Bôt, I was surprised to see two Red Cage Fungi in the recently cut back bank at the side of the road. I have seen photos on the Guernsey Wildlife Facebook page but have never seen one in real life. Smaller than a tennis ball, it belongs to the family of Stinkhorns. I didn’t get down on all fours to smell it, but it does give off the smell of rotting flesh which attracts flies presumably because they help to disperse the spores. Youtube has a couple of time lapse videos and it seems that the fruiting body only lasts for a day or two. It is one of the very few fungi that I am confident to identify.