The Lyons Share

When I left Newhaven on Sunday morning to go to France for a couple of hours, I wasn't expecting to get a new species of cetacean on my British list. The first dolphins we saw turned out to be White-beaked Dolphins. This is hugely significant in the English Channel as this species is associated with more northern waters, particularly the North Sea. They were quite large dolphins with obvious pale markings but their most striking feature was the frequency with which they were breaching, sending splashes of water high into the air, almost looking like the blow of a whale. This was my 11th species of cetacean but only my 5th in British and Irish waters. We also saw Bottlenosed Dolphins and Harbour Porpoises.

The trip was arranged by MARINElife as part of a two day course and was well attended. I was impressed by the knowledge of the instructors and I will definitely be signing up to do some volunteer surveys.

A big thank you to Adrian Shephard and Carol Farmer-Wright for organising this course. Thanks also to Adrian for allowing me to use his photo of the White-beaked Dolphins dorsal fin above.

A plastic heron and a Small Dusty Wave in a car park stair well was about as interesting as it got. Yawn. So, I escaped the car boot at the marina and went sea watching. I immediately saw a mixed flock of migrating terns. There were eight Comics and a single Little Tern. After that the bird life was pretty dull with a Med. Gull, a Wheatear, 9 Sandwich Terns  and 5 Sand Martins being of the most interesting.

Just by the western arm of the marina, there is a tiny patch of vegetated shingle. Dominated by the rather local Sea Kale here, this community is best described by SD1a - the typical Curled Dock - Yellow-horned Poppy shingle community. There is also Sea Fern-grass here as well as Sea Sandwort, Sticky Groundsel and a few specimens of the alien grass Cockspur (below). Further up the slope this community grades into SM24 - Sea Couch salt-marsh community.

I searched for some invertebrate interest but all I could find was this green carabid under a stone. I struggled even to get this shot, it was very camera shy and just kept trying to bury itself. It keyed out rather neatly to be the common Harpalus affinis, one of the ones I have already seen. It appears I have failed to see a single new species all weekend! Bugger.