Seal watching

After the cold and wind driven rain of the previous day I was rather expecting the worst for our seal watching trip and woke the next day hoping the rolling waves wouldn't lead to rolling stomachs. Thankfully though the weather was dry and calm with the sun peeking in and out of the hazy clouds.

We headed out of the harbour on a little fishing boat, donning hats as although it was calm there was still a bit of a bracing sea breeze. Although we hit a few waves heading out of the harbour we headed along the coast of Ramsgate and up into the estuary of the Stour into placid waters.

The river itself used to be both wider and busier in the past when it was used to ferry goods up Canterbury and smugglers waited along the riverbanks where they would lure cargo vessels to shore before stealing away in the night up through tunnels carved into the cliffs. 

Now the estuary sits between two national nature reserves where it's coastal salt marshes provide invertebrates for wetland birds and fish for the seals who take advantage of the tidal nature which causes the narrowing of the channel.

We passed a mudflat busy with black-backed gulls and oystercatchers and the odd avocet. A couple of redshanks wheeled by in the sea breeze across the saltmarsh where I spied some Brent geese wading behind a bank of vegetation. Curlews called and flapped by close to our boat enabling us to see there long downcurved bills that they use to probe for shellfish and invertebrates in the sediment.

Then we saw the seals in the distance, almost hard to see at first looking like shipwrecked row boats along the water's edge.  As we headed closer we could see one or two seals bobbing in the water but most lay in small groups along shore, some sleeping but others watching to see what we were up to. There were a mix of adults and this year's pups who had grown massively so to be hard to distinguish although they tended to have paler fur. Older seals appeared more mottled in appearance, some almost dressed in leopard print. We noticed one small pinkish seal that had been born later in the year that we thought might be albino. All the ones we saw were common seals with their rounded faces although we heard the long-faced grey seals also spent time here too.

Most common seal pups have already shed their lanugo (a white furry coat) before they are born. This enables them to learn to swim very quickly (lanugo's are not waterproof) meaning common seals can breed on estuaries where the flooding of habitat is less of an issue for them that grey seal pups who retain their lanugo for a couple of weeks. 

After getting some lovely views of the seals including one splashing around in the water we headed back to harbour. A couple of heavy looking herons flew overhead before sinking back down into the marshland as we passed. I regretted only having my phone on me for the trip and not taking a camera but hopefully I can borrow some photos of the seals as it would be great to paint them.

A little bit of sun on our way back to harbour

Wildlife Watch: Pale toadflax

This year I've been taking part in some volunteering where I help monitor a stretch of roadside noted a Roadside Nature Reserve. Roadsides can actually be important and diverse grassland habitats as they often haven't seen the addition of fertillisers like many pastures have. A species of note here is Pale toadflax (Linaria repens), a plant that is relatively rare in Kent and this is what this Wildlife Watch is about.

Toadflaxes are part of the Plantain family and are so named as their flowers are said to resemble a toad's mouth - not sure i see it myself but the flower shape is quite distinctive with three lower lobes and two upper ones to each flower with each flower having a spur that protects to the back. 

Pale toadflax is a small plant that grows in dry calcareous (alkaline) soils. Its flowers are white or pale lilac that are striped in purple with a yellow central spot. It has a stumpy spur at the flower's base that is straight and flowers in later summer up until October. It is a hairless plant with simple tapering leaves that spiral around the stem in whorls.

Common toadflax - also present at the site

It can hybridise with another native toadflax, Common toadflax - a larger two tone yellow flower to give pale yellow flowers with purple veins. Some of the flowers on the site did seem to have a pale yellow appearance so I wonder if there are hybrids there as Common toadflax is also present; although I'm not sure how common hybrids are.