ECHINODERMS, DOLLAR DOVES & PETRIFIED BISCUITS

February 27, 2019 by Rolling Harbour

ECHINODERMS, DOLLAR DOVES & PETRIFIED BISCUITS

Echinoderms (Gr. ‘Hedgehog Skin’) comprise a large variety of sea creatures characterised (mostly) by radial symmetry. In a nutshell a creature with radial (as opposed to bilateral) symmetry can be divided into equal portions from the centre, like a cake. It has no left or right side and no definable front or back. It is multidirectional from the centre, where the mouth is located. It obviously has a distinct upper side and an underside, but that has no bearing on this form of symmetry.

Within the family of radially symmetrical animals, echinoderms (starfish, sand dollars and sea urchins) are unique in having five-point radial symmetry. These are the creatures you are most likely to come across in Abaco. There are two particular aspects of dollars and biscuits that merit a closer look (made more difficult by me stupidly taking photos of white things on a white background).

DOLLAR DOVES

I’m sure all Bahamians know or are aware of at least one version of the famous ‘Sand Dollar’ poem, in which the various characteristics of the test (the skeleton of the creature) are given religious significance. One verse of the poem may be puzzling: “Now break the centre open And here you will release The five white doves awaiting To spread good will and peace”.

The Sand Dollar Legend

A few years back, Senior Granddaughter was looking at some Abaco sand dollars I’d given her for her growing collection of shells. She picked one up, shook it and it rattled. She said a friend at school had told her that a rattling sand dollar has ‘doves’ inside it, and asked if we could break it open and see. I’ve learnt that it is useless to argue with her – she has the tenacity of a trial lawyer – so we did. This is what we found.

Sand Dollar with a spiky interior like a white cave with stalagmites and stalagtites

Five white doves (in fact, the separated parts of the creature’s feeding apparatus)

Two broken pieces showing where the doves are centrally located

A regrettably poor photo of a single dove

The image below, from Pinterest, shows the ‘mouth’ with its dove-parts intact, in an arrangement called ‘Aristotle’s Lantern‘, a five-sided globular structure that supports the mouth and jaws of an echinoderm.

PETRIFIED BISCUITS

In common parlance ‘petrified’ is an extreme version of ‘terrified’. Literally, it means ‘turned to stone’ (L. petrus, a rock). It is descriptive of a state of fossilisation, where an animal skeleton or dead wood or plant matter turns over aeons into stone. Senior GD (a most inquisitive girl) followed up on the doves research after discovering a box containing random stones and fossils. She found these two items:

Fossilised sea biscuits Petrified / Fossilised Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen)

A closer look at the pair of rocks Petrified / Fossilised Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen)

The undersides of the fossils above – looking like stones but with some tell-tale small holes Petrified / Fossilised Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen)

A close-up of the pale biscuit Petrified / Fossilised Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen)

Sea biscuits on the beach at Delphi – familiar white skeletons (‘tests’) but not yet fossils

A ‘modern’ non-Jurassic Abaco sea biscuit in close-up

FUN FACT

Florida has an unofficial but proposed State Fossil, the ‘Sea Biscuit (Eocene Age)’. I didn’t know it before, but it turns out that more than 40 US States have State Fossils. Whatever next? State Bacteria? State Viruses?

SO HOW OLD MIGHT A PETRIFIED BISCUIT BE?

The fossil biscuits I have looked at, from Florida to Madagascar (see small image above), are said to come from three specific historic epochs – from the oldest, Jurassic (145m – 201m years ago), to Eocene (34m – 56m) and Pleistocene (0.01m – 2.6m).

HOW DOES THAT HELP ANYBODY? BE MORE PRECISE

By all means. Here is an excellent Geochart that gives an idea of the time span. A Jurassic sea biscuit would be more than 145m years old. This chart also helpfully helps avoid confusion with the Eon Era Period Epoch ordering.

geotimescale

You will find more echinoderm entertainment using this link to my fellow-blogger ‘Dear Kitty’ https://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2007/01/01/big-hedgehog-small-sand-dollars-diving-schools/

All photos ‘in-house’ except the Delphi biscuits, Clare Latimer; & the single biscuit Rhonda Pearce; Sand Dollar poem on Postcard, Dexter Press; the Geochart was in my ‘useful chart photos’ folder but I can’t now find the source. I did try.

SEA BISCUITS: THEY REALLY DO CONTAIN DOVES – AND MORE!

May 14, 2018 by Rolling Harbour

SEA BISCUITS: THEY REALLY DO CONTAIN DOVES – AND MORE!

Recently I posed the question whether sea biscuits, like sand dollars contain ‘doves’. I had one in my hand, it rattled, I took a photograph through its ‘mouth hole’ and the question was answered. Biscuits do indeed contain doves – see HERE for details and comparisons with dollar doves.

However, I spinelessly* failed to break open the biscuit to check out the contents more closely. I theorised that, because of the 5-way symmetry of these creatures, there would be 5 doves (which are in fact segmented mouth parts) in a biscuit exactly as with a dollar, and amiably challenged anyone to disprove it. [* biscuits and dollars are types of sea urchin – see what I did there?]

Dollar dove in close-up – one of 5 segmented mouth parts inside the ‘test’ (skeleton) Sand Dollar 'Doves', Abaco (Keith Salvesen)

Melissa Ann Guinness from Hope Town has a far more robust attitude to these things and, taking up the challenge, she heartlessly smashed open a sea biscuit from her collection to investigate further. I said I’d publish a correction if my theory was wrong. This is it – though in one arguable sense the theory holds good. It just didn’t go far enough…

In the above picture you can see (a) 4 quarters of a sea biscuit skeleton (b) 10 demi-doves (rather than 5 whole doves) and (c) a small mummified 5-limbed brittle star that was presumably in the creature’s digestive system when it died.

10 ‘demi-doves’ (or, when assembled, 5 doves that (unlike sand dollars) are in 2 parts
Sea Biscuit 'Doves', Abaco (Melissa Ann Guinness)

Complete doves

The final reconstruction – 5 doves and a bonus brittle star

Photo Credits: Keith Salvesen (1, 2, 3, 10); Melissa Ann Guinness (4, 5, 6, ,7 ,8 ,9)

SEA BISCUITS: DO THEY REALLY CONTAIN DOVES?

April 30, 2018 by Rolling Harbour

Sea Biscuits, Delphi, Abaco (Clare Latimer)

Sea Biscuits on the Beach, Delphi, Abaco Bahamas

SEA BISCUITS: DO THEY REALLY CONTAIN DOVES?

A couple of years ago I wrote a post called ECHINODERMS, DOLLAR DOVES & PETRIFIED BISCUITS. It dealt with the… fact? rumour? old wive’s tale?… that within each sand dollar test (i.e. the white skeleton) are hidden 5 ‘doves’. You can hear them rattling inside if you shake the dollar…

Sand Dollar from Abaco containing 5 miniature white doves…

I investigated the theory with senior granddaughter, and we broke a sand dollar in half. And as you can see, the answer was undoubtedly yes – there were 5 tiny white doves, thus fulfilling the prediction of the famous ‘Sand Dollar’ poem that contains the lines “Now break the centre open And here you will release The five white doves awaiting To spread good will and peace”.

Five white doves (in fact, the separated parts of the creature’s feeding apparatus) Sand Dollar Doves (Keith Salvesen) 1

A single dove, a picture of doveliness Sand Dollar Doves (Keith Salvesen) 3

I never thought to extend the experiment to sea biscuits, another object prized by beachcombers. All that changed last month when I picked up a sea biscuit and found that it, too, rattled.

A rattling good sea biscuit

So I turned it over to take a closer look at the underside. And there, unmistakably, was the source of the rattle – some kind of internal arrangement inside the feeding hole (let us not pause overlong to consider the purpose of the other hole). But it wasn’t conclusively a dove.

So I shook it around a bit (sorry, doves) and zoomed in. And there was a small white columbine-type contraption remarkably similar to those found in the dollar dove. And no, I did not smash open the sea biscuit (it wasn’t actually mine). And no, I didn’t doubt any longer that sea biscuits also contain doves.

SO WILL THERE BE 5 DOVES, LIKE WITH THE DOLLARS?

I predict there will also be five. Both dollars and biscuits have ‘five-way symmetry’ (look on the topside of a biscuit or dollar to see how); and so the mouth (from which the ‘doves’ derive) will have a single part for each of the five sectors, all linked.

If anyone would like to smash up one of their precious beach finds and test the theory, please feel free. Prove me wrong… and I’ll publish a correction! [Photo please…]

All photos Keith Salvesen except Header, Clare Latimer at Delphi

LEAST (BUT NOT LAST) SANDPIPERS ON ABACO

October 5, 2017 by Rolling Harbour

LEAST (BUT NOT LAST) SANDPIPERS ON ABACO

There are 23 sandpiper species recorded for Abaco. Of those, 4 or 5 are vanishingly rare vagrants recorded once or twice in recent history (i.e. since about 1950).

Discounting those, the ones you are likely to encounter range from the large (whimbrel, yellowlegs, dowitchers, stilts) to the small. Or, in the case of the least sandpiper, the least big of all. They are bigly little.

The binomial name of the least sandpiper – Calidris minutilla – is an apt clue to their size, the second part being Latin for “very small”. On Abaco, they are fairly common winter visitors, and each season a handful of them make their home on the beach at Delphi, where these photos were taken.

Along with their small sandpiper compadres such as SANDERLING, these busy, bustling birds of the shoreline are the ones known as “peeps” (also as stints).

Least Sandpipers breed in the northern tundra areas of North America. Like many or most shorebirds, newly hatched chicks are able to fend for themselves very quickly. It sounds unlikely I know, but within a couple of weeks or so they have fledged.

The birds forage on mudflats, in the tideline on beaches, and in wrack. They will probe into soft sand, sometimes the full length of their beak. They will even burrow right under weed to get at the concealed goodies. Their diet consists mainly of small crustaceans, insects, and snails.

Credits: All photos by Charles Skinner (contributor to “The Birds of Abaco”) except the wrack-burrowers above, by Keith Salvesen (also on the Delphi Beach).

WORLD SHOREBIRDS DAY, PIPING PLOVERS & IRMA

September 6, 2017 by Rolling Harbour

WORLD SHOREBIRDS DAY, PIPING PLOVERS & IRMA

Sept 6 2017. World Shorebirds Day dawns, even as the huge Cat 5 Hurricane Irma makes landfall over the small islands of the eastern Caribbean. Irma’s path has been relentlessly westwards, for sure – but the path has been unnervingly variable. The tracking reports showed Abaco successively as being in line for a direct hit; then taking a sideswipe from the south; then completely clear of the cone prediction; then within the northern edge… and today, a right hook to the east suggests again that Abaco will take a hit from irma (though as a predicted Cat 4 or maybe 3).

Far down the list of concerns in such a situation come shorebirds. Most if not all the islands that Irma will affect have wonderful shorebirds, both permanent and migratory. On Abaco my personal preoccupation is for the tiny Piping Plovers and our citizen scientist annual 6-month WATCH. Generally, the birds manage to find some cover at the back of the beaches to hunker down until the worst is past. But generally the beach populations are rather different after the storm, as birds scatter and take cover.

Well, except this little guy who decided to take a windy bath on the Long Dock at Cherokee during Hurricane Matthew as it passed over Abaco last October (and props to Keith Kemp for braving the elements to get this shot!)

Birds are resilient and resourceful. Humans too. But nature unleashed with full force is a terrifying prospect. From a safe distance of 4250 miles from Marsh Harbour, thoughts and best wishes from Rolling Harbour will be with all those in the path of Irma over the next few days.

Piping plovers on the Delphi Beach, at a more peaceful time

Photos: Danny Sauvageau, Keith Kemp, Keith Salvesen / Rolling Harbour; Graphic by Wunderground

WHY “ROLLING HARBOUR”? THIS MORNING’S VIEW…

March 15, 2017 by Rolling Harbour

Click to enlarge

SANDERLINGS ON ABACO: GOTTA LOVE ‘EM

November 23, 2016 by Rolling Harbour

SANDERLINGS ON ABACO: GOTTA LOVE ‘EM

Sanderlings. Wind them up with the concealed key under their left wing, and they will charge up and down the beach for an hour or two, pausing only to rip some small unsuspecting mollusk or crustacean from its sandy bed. These birds are tiny. And smart. They know all about how a retreating tide will expose the goodies. They are even happy to plunge their heads right under water (#2). They’re not really jumpy, if you don’t push your luck or have a dog with you. The best ploy of all is to find a flock near the tideline, choose a place to lie comfortably in dry sand (with a camera, I mean, otherwise you may look look a bit strange), and wait for them to come into range. Usually they are so busy, what with all that rushing around and feeding, that they will ignore you. So the hard part, after you have taken some photos, is catching the little so-and-sos to wind them up again…

VIDEO 1 In which we notice the scuttling and scooting around of sanderlings on a mission

VIDEO 2 In which we admire bathtime in a tide-pool and assorted comings & goings…

All photos and movies RH

“THE ADMIRABLE CHITON” (A DELPHI BEACH MYSTERY)

May 5, 2016 by Rolling Harbour

Fuzzy Chiton, Delphi, Abaco (Kasia Reid)

“THE ADMIRABLE CHITON” (A DELPHI BEACH MYSTERY)

The beach at Delphi is good for combing. Most of Abaco’s beaches are too, for that matter. You can find Kasia’s beachcombing page HERE. Last month 2 guests, Linda and Jan, went exploring on the beach and returned with a handful of mystery items they had found under the clumps of seaweed. These were clearly neither complete nor broken shells, and even after some research in books and online I remained baffled. They were obviously parts of some water-based species… but what parts, anatomically speaking? And what species?

Fuzzy Chiton valves (segments), Delphi Beach, Abaco, Bahamas

So I contacted Colin Redfern, Bahamian sea shell expert and author of a magisterial tome on the subject. His response was typically swift and definitive:

The ladies have found some beach-worn valves from the common Fuzzy chiton, which was so nicely photographed by Kasia on your April 12, 2012 entry – (the one that included fecal pellets) [See Header]. As you know, the meat from this species is eaten by Bahamians, who discard the unwanted shell. The individual plates then become separated by wave action and normal deterioration. Abaco has a pretty good selection of chiton species, and individual valves from some of the other species are sometimes found on beaches.

Chitons (pron. kytens) are marine molluscs with a great many species worldwide, from very small to quite large. Their shell comprises 8 interlocking and overlapping curved plates known as ‘valves’ that provide a flexible protection, and articulate as the creature moves. Chitons – at least some species – can even curl up into a protective ball. The plates are held together by a ‘girdle’ surrounding the animal.

Acanthopleura_granulata_(West_Indian_fuzzy_chitons)_(San_Salvador_Island,_Bahamas) James St. John

Fossil records show that these primitive-looking animals derive from the Devonian period – or even Ordovician. They remind me of trilobites, even older creatures from the Cambrian period that used to fascinate me at school when I was small and paying attention. The name chiton derives from Latin word for mollusc, which itself comes from an older Greek word meaning a tunic. Which they in no way resemble.

Fuzzy Chiton, Abaco (Kasia Reid)

After a chiton dies, the valves which make up the eight-part shell come apart because the girdle no longer holds them together and these the plates may wash up in beach drift, to be found by Linda and Jan. The individual shell plates are sometimes known as “butterfly shells” due to their shape.

A DOZEN CHITON FACT TO AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS WITH

Chitons are also known as ‘sea cradles’ or ‘coat-of-mail shells
Their shell consists of 8 plates / valves so flexible that they can even curl into a ball
They move with a muscular ‘foot’, and use it to cling onto rocks like a limpet
They have no definable head, no tail and no eyes, only ‘photoreceptor cell clusters’
The mouth on on the underside of the chiton
It contains a sort of tongue – a radula – with rows of teeth, each with 17 (why 17?)
They use the radula to scrape the rock substrate for algae and similar
A chiton’s digestive system produces neat little fecal packages like white pills
Its anus is next to its foot, a design mercifully not found in humans
I learn that chitons “lack a cerebral ganglion”. I think this means, no brain as such
However they do have a primitive ‘homing’ ability too complex to summarise…
Chitons are eaten by people mainly in the West Indies and the Philippines

Chiton, Abaco 2 (Kasia Reid)

WHAT? YOU CAN EAT THEM?**

If you are asking that question, you perhaps read right through the 12 facts to the very last one. If so, you deserve an answer and indeed a recipe for Chitons aka ‘Sea Cockroaches’. And who better to provide it than the brilliantly-named PSYKDELIASMITH Click the link to find out more.

**CAUTION As a couple of people have rightly pointed out (thanks Liann and Julias) since I posted this, not all chitons are edible. Some are poisonous. So before you think of a culinary chiton caper, best check that you have got an edible one

A chiton on the move, very slowly, and apparently halted by an encounter with a nerite

wp809b3177_06

Colin Redfern kindly sent me a pdf of the chiton section of his book. Of the fuzzy chiton he writes: “Occurrence: Very common intertidally on rocky shorelines. Known locally as a Curb, with the meaty foot used as an alternative to conch in salads. Gutted specimens or disarticulated valves consequently common along shorelines.” Which is just where this post began.

FUZZY CHITON scientific doc (Colin Redfern)

And if you want to know about the title and its link to Peter Pan, click THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON

POST SCRIPT This post has generated quite a lot of comment on Facebook. Here are a few, plus an amazing discovery in Hope Town

“Commonly know as a curb, they are edible (raw) you make a salad like you do with conch , delicious !!!” (Rosalie Pyfrom)
“True some are poisonous, but your have to know which ones!! I was showed as a child which were good from bad!!” (Janice Carey Hall)
“Very delicious” (Cantrell Walker)
“Lets not forget the poisonous ones!” (Julias Sawyer)
“Don’t mess wit my curbs, nom nom” + “Definitely do NOT eat the very large ones with the bumpy rim”.(Liann Key Kaighin)
“Curb stew is a Bahamian food that has since the loyalist arrived” (Steve Roessler)

Then Gary Richardson Jr added a photo of what must be a pearl, found in a curb in Hope Town.

To which I replied “Well that’s a surprise! Interesting find. Did a bit of research. Apparently all shelled molluscs are capable of producing ‘pearls’ – though they have no value. So this must be a chiton pearl…”

Credits: Linda & Jan for their beachcombing finds; Colin Redfern for his ID & info enabling this post (and his continuing interest); Kasia Reid; Hans Hillewaert & James St John (wiki uploads)

“WE WANT THE SAME THING”: SANDERLINGS À GO-GO

April 7, 2016 by Rolling Harbour

“WE WANT THE SAME THING”: SANDERLINGS À GO-GO

Good grief, this is awful. Suddenly I’m channelling Belinda Carlisle, raucous chanteuse and former lead vokes with the Go-Gos. She has not impinged on my cerebral cortex for, oh, 20 years. And even then, not of my own volition. Yet as soon as I downloaded and checked on-screen this sequence of sanderling photos taken as they foraged greedily on the Delphi beach, a spooky thing happened. The dread words and tune of ‘We Want The Same Thing’ crackled round my synapses. Listen! Can you hear it too?

It should of course have been “We Want The Same Crustaceans, Mollusks and Worms”, but no one has written that song. Yet. And I am now left with Belinda’s ear-worm… and other ones from that exhausting back catalogue are crowding in to join it, not least “Circle in the Sand” and “Heaven is that Delphi Place on Earth”…

“We Want the Same Thing”, though we have an entire beach to forage on… Sanderling Trio, Delphi Beach, Abaco (Keith Salvesen) 3

OPTIONAL MUSICAL DIVERSION (YOU WERE WARNED)

All photos RH on the Delphi Beach, Abaco; musical stuff inspired by Ms Carlisle. Weird.

AMERICAN REDSTARTS ON ABACO: THE DISTAFF SIDE

February 25, 2016 by Rolling Harbour

AMERICAN REDSTARTS ON ABACO: THE DISTAFF SIDE

I have a feeling that people are more familiar with the male American redstart than the female. The male’s striking near-black and orange livery is memorable. The female’s equivalent brown and yellow colour scheme is a little more subtle (or ‘drab’, which is a go-to bird book description where the male of a species is flamboyant; I prefer ‘subtle’ as a politer description). Charlie Skinner managed to get some lovely shots of females in the pines and scrub at the back of the Delphi beach.

American Redstart (f), Abaco 1 (Charles Skinner) American Redstart (f), Abaco 2 (Charles Skinner)

These birds are one of the 37 warbler species recorded for Abaco, where they are common winter residents. Generally they start to arrive in October, and some are usually still around in March. It is believed that the flashing tail-spreading of both sexes, shown in some of these images, acts either to attract insects; or to confuse them in some way. I can’t think how or why. I imagine the tail-fanning also forms part of the redstart courtship rituals. Incidentally (*fun fact alert*) male redstarts are known to raise two families simultaneously, the nests being a convenient distance apart so that his deceit remains his secret.

American Redstart (f), Abaco 5 (Charles Skinner) American Redstart (f), Abaco 3 (Charles Skinner)

This pretty juvenile is impossible to sex at this age. Could go either way. (Photo: Becky Marvil) American Redstart (juv), Abaco (Becky Marvil)

For comparison, the more familiar male (and more brash – typical). (Photo: Gerlinde Taurer) Bahamas-Great Abaco_6374a_American Redstart_Gerlinde Taurer copy

Photo credits: Charlie Skinner, Becky Marvil, Gerlinde Taurer

ECHINODERMS, DOLLAR DOVES & PETRIFIED BISCUITS

February 12, 2016 by Rolling Harbour

Sand Dollar from Abaco containing 5 miniature white doves…

ECHINODERMS, DOLLAR DOVES & PETRIFIED BISCUITS

Echinoderms (Gr. ‘Hedgehog Skin’) comprise a large variety of sea creatures characterised (mostly) by radial symmetry, often five-way. For Abaconians, the most frequently encountered are starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea biscuits. I am going to look at two particular aspects of dollars and biscuits, conscious that my illustrative photos of white objects were stupidly taken against a white background.

DOLLAR DOVES

I’m sure all Bahamians know or are aware of at least one version of the famous ‘Sand Dollar’ poem, in which the various characteristics of the test (the skeleton of the creature) are given religious significance. One verse of the poem may be puzzling: “Now break the centre open And here you will release The five white doves awaiting To spread good will and peace”.

Recently, Senior Granddaughter (10 this week) was looking at some Abaco sand dollars in her unfeasibly huge collection of shells. She picked one up, shook it and it rattled. She said a friend at school had told her that a rattling sand dollar has ‘doves’ inside it, and asked if we could break it open and see. I’ve learnt that it is useless to argue with her – she has the tenacity of a trial lawyer – so we did. This is what we found.

Sand Dollar with a spiky interior like a white cave with stalagmites and stalagtites Sand Dollar Doves (Keith Salvesen) 4

Five white doves (in fact, the separated parts of the creature’s feeding apparatus) Sand Dollar Doves (Keith Salvesen) 1

Two broken pieces showing where the doves are centrally located Sand Dollar Doves (Keith Salvesen) 5

A single dove (best viewed the other way up for full-on doveliness) Sand Dollar Doves (Keith Salvesen) 3

The photo below, from Pinterest, shows the ‘mouth’ with its 5 dove-parts intact, an arrangement called ‘Aristotle’s Lantern’.

PETRIFIED BISCUITS

In common parlance ‘petrified’ is an extreme version of ‘terrified’. Literally, it means ‘turned to stone’ (L. Petrus, a rock). It is descriptive of a state of fossilisation, where an animal skeleton or dead wood or plant matter turns over aeons into stone. Undaunted by her Doves discovery, SG (a most inquisitive girl) also discovered a box containing random stones and fossils. She found these two items:

Fossilised sea biscuits Petrified Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen) 1

A closer look at the pair of rocks Petrified Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen) 5

The undersides of the fossils above – looking like stones but with some tell-tale small holes Petrified Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen) 2

A close-up of the pale biscuit Petrified Sea Biscuit (Keith Salvesen) 6

Sea biscuits as everyone knows them, on the beach at Delphi – skeletons but not yet fossils Sea Biscuits, Delphi, Abaco (Clare Latimer) copy

A ‘modern’ sea biscuit in close-up Sea Biscuit, Abaco (Rhonda Pearce) copy

FUN FACT

Florida has an unofficial but proposed State Fossil, the ‘Sea Biscuit (Eocene Age)’. I didn’t know it before, but it turns out that around 40 States have State Fossils. Whatever next? State Bacteria?

SO HOW OLD MIGHT A PETRIFIED BISCUIT BE?

The fossil biscuits I have looked at, from Florida to Madagascar, are said to come from three specific historic epochs – from the oldest, Jurassic (145m – 201m years ago), to Eocene (34m – 56m) and Pleistocene (0.01m – 2.6m).

HOW DOES THAT HELP ANYBODY? BE MORE PRECISE

By all means. Here is an excellent Geochart that gives an idea of the time span. A Jurassic sea biscuit would be more than 145m years old. So maybe the next plan should be to take the 2 petrified sea biscuits plus SG to a museum to see if we can get an idea of their age… geotimescale

All photos ‘in-house’ except the Delphi biscuits, Clare Latimer & the single biscuit Rhonda Pearce; Geochart to be credited asap, mislaid the source…

FEEDER BIRDS AT THE DELPHI CLUB, ABACO

September 15, 2015 by Rolling Harbour

FEEDER BIRDS AT THE DELPHI CLUB, ABACO

The compilation of The Delphi Club Guide to THE BIRDS OF ABACO involved making a few rules and sticking to them. For example, the avian images in the book – and there are a great many – had to be of birds actually photographed on Abaco or in Abaco waters. Gorgeous pictures from Grand Bahama or New Providence were ruthlessly excluded, however painful it was to do. Some wonderful spoonbill photos taken in Nassau stayed in the ‘Not Use’ folder. The temptation to slip in an non-Abaco whimbrel to fill a whimbrel-shaped space among the shorebirds had to be resisted – even though at the time the last recorded sighting of one on Abaco (no photo) was in 2000…

Another important restriction was the stipulation that we would only use birds that had been photographed in their natural surroundings, defined as being a place where a particular species might naturally be found. Coppice and shoreline, obviously, but this included utility wires, posts and docks etc for species that habitually use them to perch on or hunt from. However, the rule meant a complete embargo on feeder photos, however winsome a hummingbird might look as it sips sugar water. We extended the principle to include a ban on luring birds into camera-shot with seed or corn trails; and similar ruses beyond the simple whistles and pishes that anyone might use to tempt a bird out of deep cover.

Cuban Emerald coming in to land… and feeding

The Delphi club is the perfect location for an enviably varied number of species. Its remoteness down a one-mile drive from the Highway, with pine forest giving way to luxuriant coppice, ensures minimal disturbance for the birds including a number of rarer species.

The one-mile white sand curve of the beach sees many shorebirds and seabirds in all seasons. The gardens attract both the usual suspects and less common birds. The building, too, has its resident West Indian Woodpeckers in two nesting boxes under the eaves, thoughtfully provided to discourage the Club’s woodwork from exploratory drilling.

Mr and Mrs Black-faced Grassquit

There are a number of seed and sugar water feeders around the place, and bird baths too. It’s a long time since I featured a collection of ‘tame’ birds. This post shows a few of the species that have made Delphi their home.

Mr and Mrs Greater Antillean Bullfinch

Mr and Mrs Painted Bunting

Bananaquit: the curved beak makes it easy to use the hummer feeder (see above)

A Gray Catbird takes a drink… and a bath

Adaptive behaviour from a W I Woodpecker – that long tongue is perfect for the job

The turkey vulture takes priority over all smaller birds…

A red-legged thrush enjoys picking up the seed shrapnel off the ground…

As do rose-breasted grosbeaks and indigo buntings

Meanwhile, a yellow-crowned night heron takes a drink from the pool

Credits: all photos RH except aerial shot of Delphi, Peter Brown; the hummers, Peter Mantle; and the buntings / grosbeaks, PM and Caroline Stahala…

ENDANGERED SPECIES DAY: ONE LITTLE REASON WHY IT MATTERS…

May 15, 2015 by Rolling Harbour

I had been going to post a selection of bird photos to mark Endangered Species Day today. I’d begun to plan the details – the birds to use, the captions for each and so on. Then I saw one photograph that is so charming and yet so poignant that I realised that adding further images would be superfluous. This tiny piping plover chick is a potent symbol of the vulnerability of all threatened species.

This shot was taken by award-winning and renowned wildlife photographer Melissa Groo. If you want to see the most wonderful and varied wildlife photography that you could ever imagine, please go to Melissa’s website and prepare to be amazed. You will find it HERE.

I have posted several times about the endangered piping plovers, many of which overwinter in the northern Bahamas generally, Abaco particularly, and the Delphi Club beach specifically. There are believed to be fewer than 8000 individual birds on earth, and their little world of the shoreline is threatened at both ends of their migration, as well as at their rest ‘stopovers’ en route in either direction. Conservation programs at each end of the range are proving effective at preserving the plovers’ habitat, and the population does seem to have increased slightly. Each chick protected represents a small triumph for conservation.

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RARE GEMS

50 WAYS TO PLEASE YOUR PLOVER

PLOVER LOVER?

Photo credit: Melissa Groo, with thanks for the inspiration! “Less is more…”; Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ for their partnership conservation work with PIPL on Abaco and in the Bahamas; the originator – ?Great Lakes Piping Plover Project – of the neat small logo…

PLOVER LOVER? MEET SOME CUTE CHICKS ON ABACO

May 6, 2015 by Rolling Harbour

PLOVER LOVER? MEET SOME CUTE CHICKS ON ABACO

(*Serious Voice*) “The Wilson’s Plover is the only permanent resident plover found on Abaco, the other species being the winter resident Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Piping Plover and Killdeer; and the rare transient American Golden Plover. The nidification of the Wilson’s Plover is by common consent among naturalists the most…”

But let’s not get carried away with all that pompous ornithological stuff. There are baby plovers to be considered. Each one exudz adorbz and absorbz admirz. Most of the photos below were taken on the beach at Delphi. Ready? Let’s meet some chicks… But you can’t have them without first having the eggs, can you?

The Wilson’s Plovers at Delphi generally nest at the north end of the beach, up towards the reef. It is secluded, has good sight-lines and is bordered by pines. On the approach of a predator or human (in this case, me), the tiny chicks are sent scuttling to safety at the back of the beach while the parents prepare to tough it out if need be…

“You ain’t seen me, right?”

“I know we are caught in the open, but if we stand really still, you can’t see us, right?”

One of the most fascinating aspects of bird behaviour to watch is the so-called ‘broken-wing’ display put on by plover parent(s) to distract a predator away from a nest or scrape, and the eggs or chicks in it. Kildeer and black-necked stilts are among other species that do this performance. It goes like something like this:

“Oh! OW! I am helpless. Please don’t attack me, Apex Predator, for I am but a vulnerable plover…”

“But kindly follow me as I flap pathetically (moving away from my nest). I can’t fly, you know…”

Camouflage also plays a part in the protection of these little creatures. This chick is on the rocks at the north end of the Delphi beach, the bit where you begin to wish you’d worn shoes because the rock is so sharp… From 10 feet away, you might well miss seeing the chick completely.

This is one of my favourite shots, also at Delphi, taken by Sandy Walker

Quite a while ago, I wrote about a Wilson’s Plover family that had made their scrape at Nettie’s Point, the place where the bonefishing skiffs are launched. They chose their homemaking site right where the trucks and trailers turn. Big mistake you might think. But the kind guides built a small stockade of branches round the scrape so that it could clearly be seen and avoided. After that, Mrs WP settled down happily and Mr WP stood guard whenever anyone was around…

The protective stockade in place. Mrs Plover in place. All’s well with the world

Soon after, two chicks hatched, were reared by both parents, and in due course fledged safely

Photo Credits: Clare Latimer (2, 7, 8); Tom Sheley (1, 3, 9, 13, 14); Sandy Walker (10); RH (the rest)

ABACO, HERE WE COME – READY OR NOT…

March 6, 2015 by Rolling Harbour

ABACO, HERE WE COME – READY OR NOT…

The seats are chosen, the online check-in done, the die is cast… Mr and Mrs Harbour are on their way in the BA cattle truck. Laptops are to be abandoned for the duration, but I intend to post occasional things of interest by iPhone – a Kirtland’s warbler sighting, maybe (I wish!) or a fish that has stupidly managed to impale itself on my hook perhaps. Normal blogging service, if there is such a thing round here, will be resumed in due course…

FISH ON!

“THE BIRDS OF ABACO”

The book was launched at the Delphi Club exactly one year ago. We have been really delighted by the huge interest in it and the enthusiasm for it shown by so many people – residents, migratory residents and transients. There are still copies available*. If anyone would like a signed copy while we are at Delphi, I’m sure that can be arranged. I shall bring my special signing pen (it doesn’t smudge!) just in case…

It’s possible – by which I mean highly likely, of course – that perceived ‘downtime’ on Abaco will in fact be quite busy. Fishing. Birding. Beaching. Pooling. Talking. ~~Drinking~~. Eating. Sleeping. So apologies in advance if I’m not so responsive to comments, Facebook stuff and general soshul meeja matters. No offence meant and I hope none taken – I’ll try to keep up with it or play catch up in due course. Anyway, for those who kindly stick with Rolling Harbour or drop in occasionally, much appreciated…

DELPHI SUNDOWN

*The price shown in the flyer for the book is now $150 to take account of the VAT. The publisher has absorbed the balance

Fishing sign pic: Pelangi Store, eBay. I ‘borrowed’ it, but who knows, they might make a sale as a result…

ROLLING HARBOUR, ABACO: LIFE’S A BEACH & THEN SOME…

March 2, 2015 by Rolling Harbour

ROLLING HARBOUR, ABACO: LIFE’S A BEACH & THEN SOME…

Rolling Harbour (the geographical feature) is a gently curving one-mile white sand bay presided over by the Delphi Club, which sits on a 50 foot cliff behind the beach. There are rocks at either end, fish in the sea (including bonefish and, in the right conditions, permit), birds on the shore and shells on the sand. And that’s it…

And if anyone can explain the strange ribbed sky effect that seems to have appeared from nowhere when I posted these photos that I took last year (300dpi), then I’d be very grateful…

‘AMOY’ THERE! AMERICAN OYSTERCATCHERS ON ABACO

September 3, 2014 by Rolling Harbour

‘AMOY’ THERE! AMERICAN OYSTERCATCHERS ON ABACO

The American Oystercatcher Haematopus palliatus is a familiar shorebird, with the significant advantage that it cannot be mistaken for any other shore species either to look at or to hear. All those little sandpipers and plovers can be very confusing; the handsome AMOY stands out from the crowd. I am posting about this species now as a prelude to WORLD SHOREBIRDS DAY on September 6th. The link will take you to the official Facebook Page where you will find more information, including how to sign up for a pleasant day’s birding, with the chance to report your sightings.

The header picture and the next 2 were taken by photographer and ace birder Tom Sheley on the Delphi Club beach. Unsurprisingly, we used one of these wonderful photographs as a full-page image in The Delphi Club Guide to THE BIRDS OF ABACO.

Bruce Hallett, author of the essential field guide ‘Birds of the Bahamas and the TCI’ (featured in the sidebar) was a major contributor to the book. Not just with his excellent photographs, either, such as the two below. His knowledge, his patience with my queries, and his scrupulous reading of the final draft to eliminate my errors were vital to the project. American Oystercatcher.Abaco Bahamas.Bruce Hallett

Here are two recordings of oystercatchers, unmistakeable call sounds that will probably be instantly familiar.

Lopez Lanus / Xeno-Canto

Krzysztof Deoniziak / Xeno-Canto

I like the rather dishevelled appearance of this AMOY from Jim Todd, fly fisherman, author of ‘The Abaco Backcountry’, and intrepid kayak explorer around the coast of Abaco. American oystercatcher Abaco (Jim Todd)

The next two photos were taken on the Delphi beach by Charlie Skinner, another contributor to the book. Below them is an ‘in-flight’ shot by Bruce Hallett. American Oystercatcher, Abaco (Charlie Skinner)

This fine video from Audubon shows close-up views of the American Oystercatcher, and unleashes more of the distinctive call-sounds – an insistent wittering – of the species. [vimeo https://vimeo.com/48479131%5D

For some time, I found it difficult to distinguish American and Eurasian Oystercatchers. The markings of both species are variable according to gender, age, season and so on, but are generally very similar. Mrs RH noticed the salient difference at once – the eyes. The AMOY has bright orange eyes with red eye-rings; the EUROY’s eyes are the reverse colouring, as this example shows.