The Swan family on The Penryn River are growing up.
Family of 8
One of our friends has made this little ukelele for his four year old Grandson who added the paintwork.
Arlo’s ukelele
LiveWire 4 wanted to take home the wedding flowers she had collected from the beach so I tied them up ready to be taken after Marmite on toast for breakfast!
Sandy wedding flowers
1 This little beetle and many of its friends have been seen in our house and I couldn’t identify it so I sent a photo to my very knowledgeable-about-all-things-wildlife son-in-law. This is what he told me yesterday:
I think it’s a Cornish Yarn Chafer, quite common at this time of year, probably hatched from eggs laid last spring in the fleece of Cornish hill sheep with larvae able to withstand the modern wool production process, a really voracious stitch nibbler.
Rhagium mordax
2 I was at The Penryn River today to watch our boat being launched into the water after its stay in the shipyard over the winter. Here it goes up the river to our mooring nearer to Falmouth.
Skippalong on her way up The Penryn River
3 While I was waiting, I was watching a family of swans on the river, the parents and four one year old cygnets. I was lucky enough to catch the parents chirruping at each other and making a love-heart!
Two swans making a heart shape
The cygnets
1 We spent the morning photographing the places we had lived in and around Perranporth this morning and also had a lovely time on the beach. There were dozens of pretty jellyfish in the sands and in the little pools left by the outgoing tide. I’m not sure that they would be fun to meet in the water but I would love to know their names.
Jellyfish 2
Jellyfish 1
2 On the beach near Chapel Rock and in the freshwater stream that runs from the hills into the sea we came across two adult swans with seven cygnets. I love how the wind blew the feathers on one of the parents and, less obviously, on the cygnets.
Swan family
3 We spent the afternoon photographing! This time we went in search of our industrial heritage, the relics of tin mining that are all over Cornwall, the wonderful structures that housed the beam engines that pumped the water out of the tin and copper mines. I will do a whole post devoted to them but here is the most beautiful and elegant of them all, Killifreth, Hawke’s Shaft Pumping Engine House.
Killifreth, Hawke’s Shaft Pumping Engine House
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