A NEW LOOK, AN EARLY SPRING CLEAN, & SOME TEETHING PROBLEMS

March 6, 2012 by Rolling Harbour

I’ve taken the plunge with a new look for the blog. Name change from Lower to Upper Case (no idea why I chose the former – I didn’t really understand how the thing worked, and thought it had to match the online ID, email etc). Less cluttered. More stylish. Larger images. That’s the idea, anyway. Typically, however, it’s not as straightforward as I optimistically thought it might be. There are some problems to iron out, and I see that in places the original formatting has gone walkabout, or has had “artistic differences” with its successor… and what’s this going on here? Whoa! Most images will need to be resized individually… I think we’ll all get along in the end, with a bit of tolerance and patience on all sides. Thanks for bearing with it.

Here’s an image that doesn’t really fit anywhere else, so I’ll use this space for it. Taken just off Elbow Cay on a wet (very) day, but somehow there’s a touch of magic in the colours (nb no rejigging has been done)

STOCKY CERITH – A RANDOM ABACO SHELL FROM THE BACK OF A DRAWER

March 6, 2012 by Rolling Harbour

A RANDOM ABACO SHELL FROM THE BACK OF A DRAWER

We recently discovered this shell loitering at the back of a drawer. It may well have been there for a couple of years… I had no idea what species of gastropod it might be, so I turned to a book I recently bought (and am about to review), the Peterson Field Guide on Shells. It is extremely thorough and well-illustrated, and almost at once I was able to pick the shell out as a STOCKY CERITH Cerithium Litteratum (Colin – are you still keeping an eye on the shell ID errors in this blog, I wonder? Later: yes… and he confirms the ID. Many thanks). It’s a couple of inches long and has 7 spirals before the tip part, with pronounced nobbles on the lowest 4. There’s a neat hole in it, but I don’t know whether caused by sea / beach damage or a predator. These creatures live in shallow water and are common throughout the Caribbean. So this one is nothing unusual, but I am pleased that it has eventually turned up…

STOCKY CERITH Cerithium Litteratum

BIRD OF PARADISE FLOWER: ABACO’S EXOTIC ‘BLOW-IN’

March 6, 2012 by Rolling Harbour

THE BIRD OF PARADISE FLOWER

The Bird of Paradise Plant Strelitzia is a native of South Africa, but its exoticism and all-round fabulousness has ensured its export to other parts of the world with suitable climates. These plants can be found throughout the Bahamas, including Abaco. It’s fortunately a plant that is impossible to confuse with any other, an added attraction for non-floral people… Here are a couple of my images of the plant about to flower, and having burst into flower