TANNY's PATCHES (1 Viewer)

I think the time has come for me to post the story of my patch, but first I think it appropriate to post stories of my patches of years ago. When a person my age has moved around, he obviously makes his patch wherever he is, and im'e no exception. My first patch was when I was a youngster being brought up on the Wirral Peninsular, and the Dungeon Wood, and fields over the river Dee was my childhood playground. Later on in life I lived in a village called Haverigg in the Lake District, and that was my patch for a while. You will have to read my story of that patch in Christineredgates Patch. I emigrated to Western Australia in 1966 and my patch there was the wild outback and pristine bushland on the outskirts of the City of Perth. I have now in my twlight years returned to my roots and once again the Wirral Peninsular is my final patch. I hope readers will enjoy my wanderings around these patches.

--------------------- WALKING IN HEAVEN.
It’s full summer when I stand at the top end of the Dungeon Wood under the canopy of Oak, ash and odd sycamore. Above me peers a Tawny Owl, haunched against the trunk of a tall oak tree, he swivels his head to watch my progress beneath and glares with dark penetrating eyes. I stand there amid the tangled undergrowth knee deep in Kingcups, Dead Nettles and Wood Sorrel where flies and midges hum and whine.
Chaffinches and Blackcaps, Willow Warblers and Chiff Chaff sing in harmony as they forage for food among the lower bushes of Hawthorn, Hazelnut and Alder.
The small stream gurgles amid dead branches and roots, twisting unseen through the dank undergrowth. Mud oozes beneath my tread and rank gasses escape from rotting vegetation, permeating the air with its pungent odor.
Young Blackbirds, not long out of the nest, “squawk’ for food from paternal parents, and then crouch in silence when the cock bird gives voice with his clamorous alarm. Silence prevails for a while except for the hum of insects.
A Blind Worm slithers silently over the rotting vegetation, deceptively snakelike as it searches for insects that it senses with it’s flashing, probing, sensitive tongue.
I move along the stream to where it tumbles and splutters down an overhanging rock, splashing and bubbling onto moss covered rocks below. Hart-stone ferns squeeze out of cracks in the rock-side wall giving cover to the nest of the Wren that sings his penetrating melodious song nearby, the volume quite startling from one so small.
I disturb a Green Woodpecker that was attacking a Wood Ant nest on the bank side, he flies in his dipping flight down the wood, “Yaffling” his call and lands on a dead tree and drums his territorial sound.
Dead Bracken “rustle” as a Hedgehog, “snuffles” beneath, searching for the soft, slimy slugs that slither over the damp smooth rocks where the spring-time Bluebells have rotted into a mess of muddy humus.
I stand on top of the cave, a huge slab of sandstone, weathered by wind and rain, smooth in places and stained by the camp-fires beneath, grooved with graffiti of hearts and initials by numerous lovers who immortalized their passing.
Bracken smother the sloping bank to the stream that now ripples in fury over rocks and pebbles, forming dead spots where the currant is held behind a boulder, a place of refuge for unfortunate insects who have fallen into the tumbling water, they scramble and crawl to the top and recoup in the filtered sunlight.
On the bank side opposite the cave, beneath the tall Oaks, lay broken branches from bygone storms, rotting in the dampness, festooned with moss, lichens and colourful fungi.
The grass grows lush among them, almost hiding their forlorn frames.
A Robin calls in alarm as two Foxes break cover from the bracken below and dash beneath the barbed wire fence that surrounds the wood. They enter a field of waste high wheat, golden, just ripe for harvesting. In their flight through the wheat they every so often, jump up above the heads to see what I was doing. They disappear beneath the dense Hawthorn trees that surround a Bullrush smothered pond and cause an irate Magpie to scold with a clamorous chatter.
Not far away a Tree Sparrow sits, his chestnut head, “glowing” in a beam of sunlight, and father along I see a Song Thrush vigorously tapping a snail on a rock till it breaks and he devours the juicy content, beneath his anvil are scattered remains of previous meals
In the high canopy above, Long-tail Tits flit like little bits of wool in the breeze, they perform acrobatic maneuvers in their search for food. Close by a Blue Tit “chirrs” his alarm.
I move along a well-used Badger trail seeing the spots where they had rooted up bulbs and their toilet scrapes. I reach the sett, a huge mound of sand at the entrance. Recent prints in the earth show it’s been regularly used. Brock will be laying in his bed of straw listening to my footsteps and smelling my odor, he may use a different exit tonight, depending on how convinced he is that I have gone.
I proceeded to the far end of the wood where the large trees give way to gorse and brambles, and where the wind whispers through the needles of a weather wrecked pine, a sentinel post for the steel eyed Kestrel who from this perch has a panoramic view across the sloping fields to the River Dee.
A Yellow Bunting stands on a battered fence post, his buttercup head glowing in the sunlight, singing his familiar song of “a little bit of bread and no cheese”, whilst a Linnet sits on top of a gorse bush preening.
On a grassy bank along the field a Grass Snake lay, soaking up the rays of sun, oblivious of my silent approach, he plays dead when I pick him up but soon slithers around my fingers, smooth scaled and cool.
The Skylark spirals over the meadow, singing fit to bust, riding higher and higher, I lay on my back in the warm grass watching the small dot in the sky, nearby a Rabbit thumps the ground in a warning of my presence.
Blackberries festoon the huge beds of Brambles, still green and with an odd flower here and there, a promise of food in abundance for the visiting Redwing and Fieldfare in the winter.
A covey of Partridges burst away, each flying in different directions, their wings flapping then gliding and flapping again till with a twist they tumble into cover, moments later I hear them calling “kailee, kailee”, a grating sound but not unpleasant.
Away down the Hawthorn hedge the vibrating “cicada” song of the Grasshopper Warbler comes in waves on the teasing breeze that sways the golden wheat and brings alternatively the perfume of Gorse and the pungent smell of a silage tucked away in a corner of the field, the black oozing molasses seeping from beneath the compacted mound of compressed grass.
As I strolled along another hedge I hear the high-pitch call of a Stoat and I wait for its approach, in and out of the roots it dashed, chestnut fur flashing, hunting for Mice or Voles. It ran over my boot as I stood still, so intent on it’s hunt. I gave a piercing squeak through closed lips and the Stoat instantly stopped and stood on hind legs searching for the sauce of the call, it caught my smell and in a flash was gone.
I lay on the cliffs overlooking the five-mile wide River Dee and listened to the haunting wail of the Curlew among the clamor of numerous waders out on the mudflat. There are always some waders to be seen or heard out there, even during the summer months when most of the birds are away in their breeding grounds in the Arctic. In the winter there is a bedlam of sound with thousands of waders following the receding tide to feed on the rich pickings. Faintly from the distant mouth of the river where it reaches the Irish Sea, I could hear the singing of (Mermaids), Grey Seals basking on an exposed sandbank, not far from the famous Hilbre Island.
As I lay there listening to all the wonderful sounds of nature, I could also hear the sound of Church-Bells, pealing their invite to devoted patrons who worship their God for creating the world. I smiled to myself, for I have no need to go to a church to be convinced of creation. Am I not in my Gods church, right now?

Brilliant!!!! (Be good to see it laid out on a page so it reads more like poetry - as it sounds?)

Wow, Tanny! That's fantastic!

Beautifully written tanny,most enjoyable.

Matt

Wonderful imagery, it brought tears to my eyes.

Tanny,an amazing peice of prose,you really have missed your voaction in life.You are so adept at writing exactly what you see and hear.Everything is described with such clarity,one can see and hear the sounds and colours.

Thank you everyone, so glad you enjoyed reading my story of my childhood patch. This next story is about my first patch in Western Australia and around about the year 1972. If there are any "Sandgropers" (Western Australians) reading this then the place I am describing is in the period when the top of Marmian Avenue was at Burns Beach Road.

-----------------------HIDDEN EYES ARE WATCHING.
As I lay on my bed on this spring morning, listening to the Singing Honeyeater and Magpies serenading the rising sun which beams through the chinks in the curtains, I felt the urge to get out and go for an early walk in the bush, an urge to wander free among the flowers and birds, to wash away the dust of civilization and blend in harmony with the wilderness, to stalk and watch the wild things, and be watched in return by those creature’s that seem to be there but never seen, those that lurk in the depths of the impenetrable scrub.
I sprang from my bed and dressed hurriedly, the urge strong within me, I did not want to waste a moment longer. After grabbing a mouthful of cereal and a cup of Green Tea I donned my strong bush boots, slung my binoculars around my neck and my note book in my pocket, and stepped out of the house and breathed deeply the flower flavored air.
I bounded through the suburbs, passing children going to school, their tinkling laughter and youthful innocence seemed to blend with the glory of this spring day. The roadside was festooned with colourful Gazanias, those daisy like flowers from Africa who have taken so readily to our West Australian climate, so readily in fact they could be considered an introduced pest as they smother the native flowers. They nod their heads of varying colours and grin to the sun. Pottering among the flowers were a few Senegal Doves, another introduced species, pastel shades of their plumage contrasting with the brilliant yellow, white, maroon and copper of the flowers.
The Welcome Swallow calls “tsee, tsee” as it flits about the houses, I can almost hear the lisp of its wings as it flies close by.
I reached the end of the bitumen road and it continued on as a disused trail into the virgin bushland that is hardly touched by the hand of man. Sadly, in the near future all the bushland on this coastal corridor will become mile upon mile of suburb after suburb of houses and shopping centers. The creatures living here at the moment will be pushed father and farther away as humans destroy in the name of progress.
Wandering up that trail the sound of human activity diminished and was no more. I wandered over a small hill and down into a hidden valley. The contrast from suburbia was almost overwhelming; I sat on a bank side, saturating my senses with its splendor. The air vibrated with life, a scratching, rustling, growing, oozing life. The scrub about me, droned, buzzed, twittered with insects and birds. I sat there for ages till I became blended, a part of the scenery. Civilized man drained from me and I regained lost primitive urges, ancient stirrings of a predator entered my consciousness, they coursed through my vein and mind. When I arose I did so with stealth, each step carefully placed. A Brown Honeyeater changed its sweet song to a harsh warning call, as if it knew what I had changed into.
I moved on silently, constantly stopping, lifting the binoculars to my eyes, peering into the depths of bushes and making notes of the birds and other interesting creatures that I saw.
I playfully teased the Trigger Plant by touching it’s nervous spot with a bit of straw, this caused the pollen filled pod to snap over, if it had been a fly then the pollen would have stuck to the insect and be carried to another Trigger Plant.
The Red Wattlebird “clacked, clacked” among the flowering Driandra, then mobbed a passing Nankeen Kestrel. A young Pallid Cuckoo squeaked incessantly, driving its foster parents, the Western Silver-eye to distraction in their efforts to satisfy the youngster’s insatiable appetite.
From the depths of a dark impenetrable area of prickly scrub issued an almost inaudible high pitched volume of squeaks that seem to float on the air and almost impossible to pinpoint. For fully five minuets I squeaked back by sucking the back of my hand. Eventually I saw a flash of beautiful blue and white, it was the White-winged Blue Fairy Wren, the male is sky blue with white wings, while the females are grey and white with a blue tail. My squeaking had drawn other inquisitive birds to the sound. The cheeky, bold Western Spinebill dashed hither and zither around me along with the, drab grey Western Thornbill, then the Scarlet Robin in it’s striking plumage of black, white and red. Followed by its cousin the Hooded Robin in just black and white. The final two were the common Rufous Whistler and the unafraid Grey Fantail that almost landed on my shoulder in its search for the source of the squeaking.
The sandy trail I walked along was patterned with the large prints of the Western Grey Kangaroo and the smaller prints of the Brush-tailed Wallaby, mingled with them were prints of the introduced Rabbit and Goanna Lizard. Smaller tracks were of the Bobtail Lizard, Skinks, Beetles, Bull Ants, Giant Centipedes and the occasional trail of a Snake. In damper spots the raised up twisting trail of the Sandgroper, or Mole Cricket, came to an end with the foot and wing print of the Kookaburra who must have seen the slight movement under the sand. I too saw movement along one of the trails and ran my finger along till I unearthed the mighty Sandgroper, all three inches of him. How vulnerable he is above ground, soft and succulent to his foes, his two front paddles dig into my hand with amazing strength and within seconds of putting him down he disappeared, like he was doing a breast stroke into the sand.
The dense scrub along the trail gave way to waste high heath land with pockets of Banksia trees and Blackboys, or Grass trees, a kind of primitive Lilly. This is the favorite haunt of the Tawny-crowned Honeyeater and Masked Woodswallow with an occasional Australian Pipit who use the exposed limestone outcrops as a nesting site.
From the top of a limestone hill I heard the persistent ‘caw” of the Australian Raven and my attention is drawn to two large birds wheeling in the sky. Through my binoculars I see the Raven is mobbing the mighty Wedgetail Eagle who soon out climbs his antagonist. Held beneath the Eagle, and grasped in his talons dangled the form of a rabbit; he certainly was reluctant to relinquish his hard earned meal to that silver-eyed black tyrant.
The Raven can be an asset to a bird watcher because of his antagonistic attitude towards the larger birds of prey, his constant calling as he pursues them draws ones attention, twice more today I observed him, first with a Brown Goshawk who screamed in fury and twisted and turned to avoid attack, then later I saw a Raven chasing a Whistling Kite. On all occasions the only way to free themselves from the pursuing, persistent black fiend was to gain height.
I left the well-worn trail and walked along an old track that was overgrown and barely visible. New-Holland Honeyeaters fluttered all around me, bright yellow, black and white, always singing and twittering. From the bush ahead flashed a brilliant blue, the Splendid Fairy Wren in all his glory. No blue could be as bright as the blue of this bird. This wren just has to be my favorite bird in Australia. For a moment he perched there in full view then lifted his head he ‘trilled” his song and then disappeared followed by the ghostly forms of the females who silently “twitter” from the depths of the scrub.
The track came to an end and I was forced to blunder on through the shoulder high prickly scrub, stealth and caution thrown to the wind as I struggled on, trying to avoid the prickliest bushes such as the Parrot bush, and hoping desperately not to step on a snake. The Dougite is the most common snake and there are plenty of them about. Nearer the swamp areas can be found the Tiger Snake, one of the most deadly of snakes.
The Death Adder is another bad one, it will lie in the track and pretend its dead, waiting for its prey to come close, and any unwary person can easily tread on them. I made my way to a stand of Banksia trees knowing it would be easier to walk beneath the outstretched limbs. Just as I reached the trees I got the biggest fright of my life, a large male Western Grey Kangaroo was sleeping right in my path, he stood up to his full height of about six feet and was not more than ten feet from me. Braced on his tail he rose before me, forearms level with my head, his chest broad and strong, nose twitching, trying to get my scent but the breeze was from him to me and I was the one who got the unmistakable musky Kangaroo smell in my nostrils. I had frozen still from the moment I detected him getting up. As we stared at each other many thoughts flashed through my mind in those few seconds. He was bigger than me and far more powerful. The ancient primitive urge to defend myself surged through me and I turned to look for a weapon. He instantly took fright and with great bounds disappeared into the scrub. The Western Grey is the largest Kangaroo and I think I had just met the granddaddy of them all. My legs turned to rubber and for a while I rested beside the cleared sand pit where he had been sleeping, his strong odor still on the air. I imagined him laying there, flicking sand over himself at the flies, especially the big spiky Clegs that were pestering me right now. Another spiky creature was also attacking me but is such a sneaky creature that I was not aware of it’s attack, it was the tenacious Tic who sits on the outmost twigs of a bush waiting for a passing Kangaroo, or Human to fall onto as they brush past. It then crawls around till it finds a suitable spot on the skin where it probes into the flesh and injects a solvent that prevents the blood from congealing, there it sits, slowly sucking the blood, its body swelling larger and larger till it is eight or nine times bigger than original size. When I got home that day I discovered eighteen of them on my body. Many more on other occasions, a hazard of birdwatching in the Australian bush.
Over the hillside with screeching cries flew a flock of White-tail Black Cockatoos, they landed in the Banksia Trees and Parrot Bushes around me, they then proceeded to wreck havoc in their feeding. The seed cones were snapped off with their powerful beaks and demolished in their search for the nuts within. When finished they drop the remainder of the cone and I could hear them “thunk” onto the ground like a fall of heavy hailstones. When a flock of these birds are feeding they always have a sentinel on watch, perched on the highest branch. I was soon spotted and the alarm was given which resulted in the whole flock of about five hundred taking to the air in a bedlam of calls, the male call similar to “kaliwoo” and the females call “Eerk, eerk”. The flock drifts over the landscape like a dark cloud.
The plaintive call of the Golden Bronze Cuckoo soon draws my attention and I imitate the call, this never fails to lure the bird to me and soon I saw it flying my way in its dipping flight and land in a tree close by. I call again and it answers with a different note while flapping its wings, which flash the iridescent green and bronze, with continuous calling I lure this bird as close as ten feet away before it realizes its mistake and flies off.
Western Australia is called the Wildflower State and the profusion of exotic flowers is a sight to behold. So many different Ground Orchids, some called Spider Orchid, or Donkey Orchid or even Rabbit Orchid, and others so small like the two inch high Duck Orchid. Day Lilies with their delicate blue flowers that open in the morning only to die when the sun gets too hot about midday. Kangaroo Paws in splendid green and red stand proud as if knowing we Western Australians honour them as our State Emblem. Frilled lilies drape over dead branches giving a gay colour to the sun bleached grey of the bark. Flowers of bright yellow stand bright against the blackness of old burned grass trees and the succulent Pig Face drapes the land with large yellow flowers, many other flowers with no common name or names unknown to me because of the abundance of species, scatter throughout the bush at this time of the year. Spring in Western Australia is a magnificent sight, but sadly it only lasts for a short time, about two months, if that.
I soak in the beauty of this natural garden in a stupefied trance until I became aware of those hidden eyes that seem to be watching, a prickling sensation ran up and down my spine. I forgot the flowers and searched the bushes and trees. I searched and searched for minuets on end but could not shake off the feeling. Through the binoculars I covered the near bushes and the far trees but saw nothing until a nagging, questioning feeling drew my attention to an unusual small jutting piece of wood on a branch in a Banksia Tree about thirty yards away. I approached slowly and the piece of wood on the thick branch seemed to grow elongated. I stood beneath the tree and recognised the unique posture of the Tawny Frogmouth on the branch above. The bird was sitting on its nest. When I moved back and forth beneath her, I could just make out a discernable movement of the head as she followed me. I looked around for the birds mate, as I knew he must be quite near. I soon found him in a tree nearby, looking like another stump of old wood. As I walked away the birds eyes became wider and wider and when at the original place where I first saw them I could see through my binoculars her eyes were wide open and looking at me.
I slowly made my way home, speculating to myself on the wonder of nature, and thanked the powers that be for showing me the answer to those mysterious unseen eyes that one usually feels but does not see.
The next day I returned to the Frogmouths with my brother and took a wonderful series of pictures of the bird and later wrote a poem about the incident.

relatable

Truly anyone having been in WA should relate to this master piece of a word painting........

A masterpiece ,Tanny.Your memory is so clear of the birds and plants you saw ,so many years ago.

Most enjoyable,this is amongst the highest standard of writting i've yet seen on this forum.

Do we get the frogmouth poem with pics?

Matt

"Wow, Criky", thanks Peter, Christine, Matt, so glad you enjoyed my stories, now I will have to sit down and write some more after getting compliments like that, take it easy though, "me missus recons Im'e getting a big ed".

For eight years I was employed by an oil company on an isolated island off the North West Coast of Western Australia on a fortnight on and a fortnight off rotation. The Island was one of my patches during that period. This is just one story from that time.


The time was ten thirty pm and I was heading for the largest beach on the Island, the one at the northern end. It was one of those warm, humid nights with not a breadth of wind. So far I’d had quite a successful night with three Hawksbill turtles tagged and measured on the Pipeline Beach. Flushed with this success I decided to continue on and see what results I could get on Cooks Beach. The humidity caused me to perspire profusely and I was caked in a film of gritty sand. The night was dark and I had to use the large Dolphin torch to negotiate the treacherous, pot-holed, rocky surface. I preyed for the moon to rise because I knew it would be a full one tonight.
The light of the Gas Flare from the Oil Rig offshore made it possible for me to see along the beach from the cliff top overlooking the beach. I could make out the tracks of at least three recent visitors. One track had no corresponding trail back to the water, another track showed that a turtle had been and gone, and at the far end of the beach I could make out the dark form of a turtle heading back to the water after having possibly laid it’s eggs. I scrambled down the cliff and raced along the beach to catch the receding turtle, but the sand was dry and soft and I am not as young as I used to be and also turtles can put on quite a turn of speed when they see danger approaching, consequently she reached the water before me. I suppose I could have dashed in and wrestled her back to the beach like I have done in the past, but my old ticker was pounding and I was out of breath. The two turtles I had missed were Hawksbills, they don’t take as long as the Flatback and Green turtles to lay and depart. The tracks of the Hawksbill and the Loggerhead show that these turtles crawl up a beach, but the Green and the Flatback swim up, probably because they are much bigger than the first two.
I returned to the single track and knew it was either a green or Flatback, I hoped it was a green because the Flatback were a common breeder on the Island. I found the turtle deep in a body pit beneath the surface of the sand. Both big turtles go out of sight before reaching damp sand to dig out their egg chamber. This turtle had gone as far as possible up the beach before becoming obstructed by an eroded sand bank, she had then turned left along the bank and proceeded to dig there, to me a most stupid place to nest as the sand was very dry, she had already dug a vast amount of sand. I was pleased to see that she was a Green Turtle but I knew I was going to have a big problem with tagging her and secretively prayed that she had been tagged before, all I had to do then was make a note of the number. The right flipper was buried in sand and the left one not as bad but I still couldn’t make out if it was tagged or not.
I took off my pack and sat down to wipe my brow and recoup from my strenuous exercise, and to size up the situation before me. The time was just after eleven-o- clock, if I wait till after she’s finished laying and backfilled, I could tag her on her way back to the water, that would be in about two or three hours time, and my time was limited.
I pondered for a while before crawling up behind her to discover she had dug the egg chamber and had one of her hind flippers blocking my view so I was unable to see if she was actually laying. Greens and Flatbacks do this. My theory on this subject is that the Green and the Flatback nest on the mainland and larger islands where predators such as the Bandicoot and Goannas clamber down into the egg chamber, or sneak away some eggs while the turtle is laying. The smaller Hawksbills don’t do this, they nest on small islands where there are no big predators to cause them to evolve protective measures. These small turtles leave both hind flippers spread out on either side of the hole and it’s easy to see the eggs falling into the chamber.
Over the years as a tagger, I discovered that turtles become oblivious to any disturbance during the laying process and the best time to tag them is during this laying period.
Greens however are notorious for abandoning the digging of a nest if disturbed, even when they had dug the egg chamber, that’s why I was so careful when I arrived.
I decided to find out just how far she has got with her laying, to do this I had to excavate the dry sand from behind her till the damp sand by the egg chamber is reached
I started digging the mound of dry sand and became increasingly frustrated as it kept falling back. Laying on my stomach I dragged arms full of the gritty stuff that caked my
Sweat soaked body till eventually I had a hole behind her as big and as deep as her body pit. By now I had stripped down to just shorts and proceeded to dig until the wet sand was reached and I carefully made a hole beside her flipper and see the eggs. I estimated about thirty, a bit early to tag so I returned to my pack to prepare my equipment. I clipped the tag into the pliers and wrote the date, time, place, and tag number in my notebook. I was sweating rivers and drops fell off my nose onto my notes, smudging the ink. Sand covered my body, hair, beard, and my shorts were full after my excavating.
After a while I checked the laying again and decided it was safe to proceed. I strapped on my head lamp, a handy item that leaves the hands free to work, but can be painful with sand under the sweaty strap. The dolphin torch is placed in a convenient place to give a light over the whole area. I use this as little as possible incase the light disturbs other turtles who may be arriving to nest. On a moonlit night the moon and head torch is all I need to see what I am doing

With my left foot I step down into the body pit and immediately my boot is filled with sand, I rested my right leg on the turtles back and searched for a tag on her left flipper but found none, then tucking my right leg under me I sat on her back, I didn’t want to put my foot in the sand on the right side in fear of more sand falling down the eroded dune. The bank rose up about six feet and was only held together by the roots of the spinifex that grew on the top; the merest touch of the roots sent a stream of sand pouring down. I carefully pushed my hand beneath the sand feeling for the flipper and the innermost scale where the tag should be. She was not tagged, I knew then that I was in for a tough time and almost thought about giving the idea of tagging her away, but as a dedicated tagger I knew I had to carry on. I carefully slid off her and went to my pack to get my tape measure. I used a three meter metal tape, but should have got myself a plastic or cloth one because I invariable got the metal one jammed with sand and I had to walk around with over a meter of tape hanging out of my back-pac.
Placing my reading glasses on I returned to the turtle and once again my boot filled with sand. I measured the old girl from the junction of the skin and carapace above the neck, along the middle line to the back end by the tail and got a reading of 1030 millimeters, “criky” I thought “she’s a big one, almost four foot in length”, I’me an old “Pom’ from way back and not clued up with this metric measurements. I then started to measure her width, but to do so I had to step right over her and darn near did the splits and myself a mischief. As soon as my right foot sank into the sand, a river of the rotten stuff fell down and covered my leg and part of the turtle. After three or four attempts at reading the tape I was satisfied with 980 millimeters, just less than three foot in width. Not having weighed a turtle before I can only guess her weight to be about two hundredweight. When I was first introduced to turtle tagging, the method was to turn a turtle over onto its back and then apply the tags. I discovered that was too exhausting, especially with a big one like this old girl, I also thought it a distressing thing to do to the creature. I soon learned to apply the method of waiting for them to lay, or if they were heading back to the water I would spread-eagle myself onto their backs and hope my weight would give me enough time to tag and measure them. Only on a couple of occasions did I get dragged into the water.
Stepping back from the turtle I surveyed the situation, I had to tag her, and the right flipper first, as recommended by C.A.L.M., who supply the equipment and use my notes in their survey of Marine Turtles. As a dedicated volunteer in this turtle survey I felt I had to do my best. “Oh boy” I thought as I kicked off my boots and sox. “Wow” what a great feeling of relief as I wrinkled my toes through the warm sand. With a renewed lease of life I started towards her again, this time with the pliers tucked down my shorts I once again clambered onto the turtle. Sitting on her back in the same position as before, I leaned over and attempted to scoop away the sand from the flipper, but the darn stuff kept falling down and I had very nearly buried the poor old things head. My back soon ached in this position so I changed to laying full length on top of her but I immediately had my chest slashed by a few small barnacles. I chopped off those barnacles with the pliers and lay down again and proceeded to dig away at the sand again, flinging it behind like a turtle back-filling. After an exhausted few minutes of this caper I took a breather and lay on top of that turtle with my head resting on my arms. It then dawned on me as to what an incongruous sight this must be. Here was this hairy middle-aged man; half naked, straddled across a turtle at midnight on an isolated beach of a small lonely island way out in the Indian Ocean. The thought of what my work mates would say if they saw me, that would certainly give credence to the lewd jokes around the camp about me and the turtles. I collapsed into a fit of giggles and it seemed ages before I composed myself, even now the thought of it makes me smile.
After I had settled down I realized I was making no headway, I had heaved sand to the front and sand to the back, but just when I thought I had a chance of clearing the rotten stuff away from the flipper, down would come another heap of sand to cover it all up again. My ribs were sore, the abrasive sand and sweat ground layers of skin from my body and as for the damage the pliers were doing down in my shorts.
With my elbows on the turtle and my chin cupped in my hands, I looked down at her head half buried in the sand. “It’s too bloody dry old girl” I said as I wiped the sand from around her eyes, they were wet with salty tears. Turtles cry all the time, even when in the water, it’s a natural way of excreting the excess salt from their bodies. Then it dawned on me when seeing those wet tears. “That’s it”, I yelled, “the sand needs wetting”. I looked around seeking water and there not twenty meters away was an ocean full of the stuff. I jumped off the turtle and dashed around looking for something to carry the water in. I found an old baler shell but it had holes and cracks in it. I dashed from one end of the beach to the other in a demented search for a container. Finally I found the perfect water-holding receptacle, my old army back-pac. I tipped out all the contents and dashed down to the water. “Strewth” the wonderful feeling of that water on my feet nearly persuaded me to plunge in but the necessity of getting back to wet that sand drove me up the beach with that leaking bag and pour it over the flipper. I dashed back to the water and filled the bag again, it took five trips until I was satisfied the sand was wet enough for me to attempt to tag. I stepped over the turtle and scraped away the sand, then grasped the scale closest to the body and on the leading edge clamped on the tag. At that very instance the turtle drew both flippers forward and scooped a heap of sand and then swept them to the rear, she had finished laying and was starting the backfill. The flipper hit my shin knocking my leg from under me and I fell on top of her and rolled to the rear. Before I could get away she had scooped another load and I was near buried in her backfill. I crawled away spitting sand.
I was completely exhausted, totally drained of energy, on my hands and knees I looked up to see the moon rising over the horizon, casting a beam of silvery light on the water to the beach. I staggered up, stripped off my shorts and ran naked along that beam into the water. I lay there floating on my back, soothed by the gentle swell, listening to the “lap’ lapping” of wavelets against a nearby cliff.

Excellent stuff :clap:

Love those drawings btw,really needed that giggle!

Matt

Thanks Matt, it was meant to make people laugh, pitty you're the only one.

Wonderful ! Thanks, Tanny :t: !

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Tanny ,great stuff,love the drawings,very good.You must have been exhausted .Many thanks for such an interesting tale.

Hi Tanny

Finally found time to read your wonderful postings - seems like your are more thecomplete naturalist than purely a birder. How's the birding since you moved back to the NW?