The Isles of Scilly

FIG 20. On Samson primroses still grow near the ruins of the cottages. (Rosemary Parslow)

Besides their ruined dwellings, kitchen middens and other artefacts, the inhabitants of Samson left other mementos. They left behind several trees, tamarisk Tamarix gallica, elder, privet Ligustrum ovalifolium hedges (the latter now apparently lost, as only wild privet L. vulgare is found on the island today), burdock Arctium minus and primroses Primula vulgaris, which are still found not far from the ruins (Fig. 20). They also left the stone hedges that marked the boundaries of some of their tiny fields. Despite the history of Samson, Kay (1956) was of the opinion that it was the sort of place where a couple of enterprising young men could earn a healthy living with a flower farm and a few cattle. He had earlier heard of a Scillonian who had been offered a deal on the island, £10 per year rent for twenty years, then £250 per year afterwards. His friend did not take up the offer, his new wife not fancying a life on an uninhabited island – and it is probably fortunate for Samson that it has remained uninhabited by humans.

CHAPTER 4 Naturalists and Natural History (#ulink_e8d85ad6-b5a0-5f25-949b-7bdeff6e7fd2)

A singular circumstance has been remarked with respect of these birds [woodcock], which, during the prevalence of strong gales in a direction varying from East to North, are generally found here before they are discovered in England, and are first seen about the Eastern Islands and the neighbouring cliffs. May not this circumstance tend to elucidate the enquiries of the naturalist relative to their migration?

George Woodley (1822)

SOME OF THE early visitors to Scilly played their part in contributing to our knowledge of the flora and fauna of the islands, and some of them will be mentioned in these pages. Today, Scilly is a popular holiday destination, and many naturalists visit the islands. Universities and other groups also make field trips to Scilly to study various aspects of the ecology, especially the marine biology. Another large group that has contributed greatly to scientific information about Scilly is the diverse body of professional biologists who continue to carry out surveys and all manner of research projects on the flora and fauna, often on behalf of statutory agencies such as English Nature. Clearly there are now too many people to do more than acknowledge the contribution of a few of their number. The selection is necessarily subjective, covering mainly the earlier naturalists, but also people I know, and those whose work I have drawn upon. It is becoming increasingly difficult to acknowledge everyone who has added to our knowledge of the natural history of Scilly – especially when it comes to birds and plants. So I hope those mentioned here will stand as representative of the rest.

Prior to the early 1900s the only notes on the natural history of the Isles of Scilly were occasional comments in reports of broader interest such as that by Robert Heath (1750), after he had spent about a year in Scilly. When J. E. (‘Ted’) Lousley published his Flora in 1971 he gave a comprehensive account of botanists who had contributed to the discovery of the flora of the islands. In this he commented on the paucity of botanical records from Scilly before the early twentieth century, which he put down to the inaccessibility of the islands. So when Sir William Hooker, the first Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, spent ten days in Scilly in spring 1813, visiting all the larger islands and making only the most miserable of comments on a few species he had observed, Lousley is scathing in his assessment of the great opportunity lost.

Fortunately things picked up a little from then on. In 1821 a Warwickshire botanist, the Reverend William Thomas Bree, visited Scilly and listed a few plants, including the first record of balm-leaved figwort Scrophularia scorodonia. Other botanists also visited the islands: Francis King Eagle collected white mignonette Reseda alba in 1826, and Matilda White discovered orange bird’s-foot Ornithopus pinnatus in 1838 (Fig. 21). Fifteen species of Scilly ferns identified by Edward William Cooke were published by North (1850). The year 1852 was apparently a good one, with four excellent botanists visiting the islands in the shape of Joseph Woods, John Ralfs and the two Misses Millett. These ladies spent five weeks on Scilly in June and July and listed 150 flowering plants and ferns. Lousley is full of praise for the competence of the sisters and only regrets they did not include localities for their finds. Another botanist who paid a short visit to Scilly was Frederick Townsend, who stayed at Tregarthen’s Hotel on

FIG 21. Miss Matilda White discovered orange bird’s-foot on a visit to Tresco in 1838. (Drawing by Alma Hathway)

St Mary’s (the hotel is still there). Although he only spent ten days in the islands, he recorded 348 species and published his list in 1864. Unfortunately Lousley found 21 records on the list were probably mistakes, some of which were later corrected by Townsend himself in his own copy of the report (Lousley, 1971). As botanists at the time did not have the competent floras and identification aids we have now, I have nothing but admiration for their achievements. As more and more botanists managed to get to Scilly, some of them made a greater contribution than others to the flora; their records are acknowledged by Lousley (1971).

It was fortunate that Ted Lousley, a well-known and respected amateur botanist, visited the Isles of Scilly in September 1936, when he personally added western ramping-fumitory Fumaria occidentalis to the flora. He was so taken with the islands that he continued his visits, recording many additional species and experiencing every month from March to September during the next four years. The first manuscript version of the Flora was completed in 1941 and then hidden away during the war years to be finally completed and published in 1971. The last visit Lousley paid to Scilly was in May 1975 when he stayed at Star Castle Hotel on St Mary’s, conducting a group of botanists around the islands and showing them dwarf pansy Viola kitaibeliana. Lousley, by profession a bank manager, was at some time Honorary Curator of the South London Botanical Institute. As it happened this was where many of the specimens, correspondence and manuscripts from botanists who had visited Scilly had been deposited. Among those whose material he had access to were Hambrough (visited Scilly 1845), Woods (visited 1852), Beeby (visited 1873) and Townsend (visited 1862).

Lousley’s own herbarium specimens are now at Reading University. Some of his notebooks, letters, photographs and papers, as well as the manuscript of the Flora, are held in the archives of the Isles of Scilly Museum on St Mary’s. He also wrote a number of reports on the flora for the Nature Conservancy Council during 1946, 1954, 1957 and 1967, of which the latter three have been consulted in preparing this book, the earliest report having apparently been lost.

It was an early visit by Cambridgeshire classics don and well-known amateur naturalist John Raven to St Agnes in March 1950 that added the least adder’s-tongue fern and early meadow-grass Poa infirma to the flora (Raven, 1950). Raven spent ten days in March and April in Scilly accompanied by his father and Dr R. C. L. Burges. He found early meadow-grass was abundant and widely distributed on St Mary’s, Tresco and St Martin’s but not on St Agnes (he did not get to Bryher). While having a picnic on Wingletang Down, St Agnes, Raven found the least adder’s-tongue fern. He had seen dead fronds on a previous visit but it was too late to identify them. Another plant that he discovered was dwarf

FIG 22. In 1950 naturalist John Raven found several new plants on Scilly, including dwarf pansy on Tresco and St Martin’s. (David Holyoak)

pansy: two colonies on Tresco and also some plants on newly dug fields on St Martin’s (Fig. 22). John Raven wrote a number of books and papers on plants, including Mountain Flowers in the New Naturalist series.

Besides acknowledging the many botanists who had contributed the records that formed the basis of his Flora, Lousley also refers to the first attempt to classify the common plant communities in Scilly by Oleg Polunin in 1953. At that time Polunin was the much-respected biology teacher at Charterhouse School, Godalming. He produced short descriptions of the plant communities in Some Plant Communities of the Scilly Isles (1953) as a handout for the boys he took on field trips to Scilly. Later in the 1950s he was Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) recorder for West Cornwall, when he also found time to visit Scilly.

Polunin is probably now better known as the author of a number of photograph-based field guides to European plants.

Not everyone who recorded plants in Scilly was a botanist. W. S. Bristowe was an arachnologist who visited Scilly twice and wrote two seminal papers on the spiders (Bristowe, 1929, 1935). What is particularly remarkable is that he managed to land on so many of the small islets during his visit and not only collect spiders but also record the vegetation. In some cases until recently his were virtually the only records we have for some of the least accessible islands. Apparently he had a period of unprecedented calm weather for his stay that allowed him to make so many landings.

Someone else who seemed to manage to get onto many of the small rocky islands was a local photographer and keen naturalist. C. J. King lived on St Mary’s and owned a photographic business, sold postcards and gave lectures on natural history. He published an account of the birds and other wildlife as Some Notes on Wild Nature in Scillonia (1924). This is a small volume but full of his own very personal and interesting observations. He seems to have made many expeditions to uninhabited islands and scrambled among rocks to get close to the birds or seals he wanted to photograph, even spending the night there on occasion.

The association of the Dorrien-Smith family with Scilly, especially Tresco, has been of considerable significance to the natural history of the islands ever since Augustus Smith first leased the islands from the Duchy in 1834. During his stewardship Augustus Smith was responsible for many introductions, besides plants. Some of these introductions were quite eccentric: different coloured rabbits, deer, and even ‘ostriches’ – although from the photographs in Cowan (2001) and Llewellyn (2005) and the probable source of the birds (Augustus Smith apparently having ‘kidnapped’ the first one from a ship that had come from Rio) it would seem these were in fact South American rheas Rhea americana.

Augustus Smith also had an interest in birds, and many shot on the islands ended up in the Abbey collection. He also regularly had shooting parties, especially on Tresco, that sometimes resulted in flushing unusual species – which were shot. After the death of Augustus Smith, his nephew, Mr Thomas Algernon Smith-Dorrien (who in keeping with his uncle’s wishes changed his name to Smith-Dorrien-Smith, later shortened to Dorrien-Smith), took a leading interest in the new flower-growing industry (Vyvyan, 1953). The Dorrien-Smith family inherited the lease of all the islands, but when Major Arthur A. Dorrien-Smith (‘the Major’) succeeded his father Thomas Algernon he returned the lease to the Duchy, retaining only Tresco and the uninhabited isles. Although the Dorrien-Smiths have been mainly interested in plant acquisition for the Gardens, they also continued to add to their large collection of stuffed birds, mostly taken in the islands (generally only one of each species was collected). Between 1922 and 1940 the Misses Dorrien-Smith (Gwen and her niece Ann) made a collection of Scilly wild flowers. What Lousley describes as an ‘unreliable’ list of these, without localities, appears in Vyvyan (1953). But I think Lousley was a little harsh, as most of the 260 species are plants that are still on the Scilly list.

The Major took a particular interest in natural history, especially birds. He contributed regularly to British Birds and the reports of the Cornwall Birdwatching and Preservation Society. Commander Thomas Dorrien-Smith, the only son of the Major to survive World War II, was the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) honorary warden until the 1960s and also held a unique licence under the 1954 Protection of Birds Act from NCC to take bird specimens to add to the family’s private Abbey collection. ‘The Commander’, as he was known, was very disappointed when he was not told about the 1958 northern waterthrush Seiurus noveboracensis (the first for Britain), as he would have liked to add it to the collection! He was persuaded that rare birds should be left alive for others to enjoy and this was apparently why he stopped collecting (J. Parslow, in litt.). The last specimen shot for the Abbey collection was taken by Fred Wardle, the estate gamekeeper, about 1956. Later Peter MacKenzie persuaded the Commander to allow the bird collection to be moved from the Abbey to the basement of the recently opened museum on St Mary’s. While the collection was in the Abbey it was housed in a dark corridor; unfortunately when moved to the museum the specimens were exposed to strong light, eventually resulting in loss of colour and some deterioration. The Commander leased Tresco from 1955 until his death in 1973; his son Robert Dorrien-Smith succeeded him. Over the years the Abbey Gardens have been the source of most of the alien plants and animals now established in Scilly.

Collecting bird specimens as mounted skins was a perfectly respectable hobby among gentlemen in the nineteenth century. One collector, Edward Hearle Rodd, was author of The Birds of Cornwall and The Scilly Isles (1880), although he died while the book was in production and the final editing had to be carried out by his friend James Edmund Harting. Although there are references to Scilly throughout the text, the main section on Scilly consists of the collected letters from his nephew Francis Rashleigh Rodd, written to his uncle when staying on Tresco between 1864 and 1871. Rodd was a well-known collector of bird skins, and many specimens from Scilly ended up in his collection, eventually passing to his nephew on his death. F. R. Rodd was also a sportsman and collector, and shot many birds both for the pot and to add to his collection of stuffed birds. He also had dead birds sent to him from Scilly. One of his trophies that clearly delighted him was a bittern Botaurus stellaris that he ‘knocked down’ on Christmas Day 1864. He decided to have it mounted with the neck feathers ‘rampant’ rather than ‘couchant’. One interesting letter comments on how the gentlemen of the county were giving up their hobby of falconry and were now shooting birds instead. Collections of birds’ eggs and stuffed birds became very popular at the time. When his uncle died Rodd inherited his bird collection and housed it at Trebartha Hall in Cornwall with his own specimens. Everything was lost when the Hall was burned down in 1949 (Penhallurick, 1978).

Leslie and Clare Harvey moved to Scilly soon after Leslie retired as Professor of Zoology at Exeter University. Clare Harvey had also been a lecturer at the university and had specialised for many years in the study of seaweeds. They lived in a bungalow on the Garrison that was approached through a sally port (one of the stairways through the granite walls connecting one level with another). Ducking your head to descend the precipitous stairs to the garden, you were aware of all manner of plants, wild and cultivated, that ran riot on the walls and in the narrow garden. Clare was a great collector, and it is perhaps fortunate for future botanists that the high walls of the Garrison imprisoned most of the plants within the garden. During their sojourn on the islands the Harveys were the focus of all that was botanical, and in 1970 they started a wild-flower table in the museum, exhibiting live specimens during the summer months, replenished weekly by a group of local enthusiasts known affectionately as the museum ‘Flower Ladies’. Clare was BSBI recorder for Scilly until the 1980s, but sadly, despite an unrivalled knowledge of the wild flowers, she kept no records, wrote very little and rather lost heart without Leslie’s company after he died in 1986. Despite increasing frailty and failing sight, Clare still took an interest in the plants and continued to write to me and send specimens until just before her death in 1996 when she was in her nineties. The ‘Flower Ladies’ continued to put out their weekly display of local wild flowers until 2004, when the last team retired. But Julia Ottery (who produced a book of her wild-flower paintings in 1966), Celia Sisam, Elizabeth Legg, Lesley Knight and others were responsible for adding many plant records to the flora. Another resident who contributed to what we know about the flora was Peter Clough, who was head gardener at Tresco Abbey from 1973 until 1984. Besides being a notable horticulturalist, Peter was also a keen botanist and took a great interest in the wild flowers on Tresco. He maintained a card-index of plant records during his time on Tresco which he allowed me to copy into the database of the Isles of Scilly plants.

The Isles of Scilly Museum was opened in 1967 by the Isles of Scilly Museum Association with the aim of providing a permanent home for the finds from the archaeological site on Nornour. The present purpose-built building was built by the Council of the Isles of Scilly, financed by subscriptions, donations from the Duchy of Cornwall, various trusts and generous well-wishers, including a handsome interest-free loan from the late Mr K. M. Leach, a benefactor with a great interest in Scilly and especially the wildlife. Many natural history collections are held in the museum, including the Tresco Abbey bird collection, seashells, lichens and many other specimens. The museum also houses a small library of books on Scilly and many photographs, maps and artefacts. As honorary curator, Steve Ottery ran the museum for many years, assisted by a team of devoted and knowledgeable volunteers. Recently, Amanda Martin was appointed as part-time curator, although she too relies on a rota of volunteers to help deal with around 12,000 visitors annually and enquiries from all over the world. Another well-known resident of Hugh Town is the potter Humphrey Wakefield. Humphrey has contributed to many aspects of the work of the museum, both archaeological and natural history, as well as being the first chairman of the Environmental Trust.

A former senior curator of another museum, the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, the late Roger D. Penhallurick wrote a number of books and papers on the natural history of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, including Birds of the Cornish Coast (1969), The Birds of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (1978) and The Butterflies of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (1996).

The MacKenzie family on St Mary’s had been very much involved in the setting up of the local museum. Peter Z. MacKenzie was the veterinary surgeon on the islands and also an enthusiastic naturalist and amateur archaeologist who contributed much to what was known at the time, especially on birds and plants. In 1971 he was appointed part-time honorary NCC warden. Until David Hunt arrived, Peter and his great friend Ron Symons, plus Hilda Quick and the young Francis Hicks on St Agnes, were the only resident birdwatchers on the islands. As honorary warden, Peter was responsible, among other things, for setting up the first nature trail at Lower Moors. Also at this time the NCC were bought a boat, the Marius Neilson, by Mr Leach (who had helped with the loan to set up the museum), and this enabled Peter to warden the uninhabited islands and count seals. Until Peter’s untimely death in 1977 his boatman was a young islander, Cyril Nicholas. In 1979 Cyril was taken on as the NCC’S and later English Nature’s boatman/estate worker, running the Marius Neilson and then her later replacement Melza. Over the years Cyril has taken many survey teams around the islands and has been particularly adept at tricky landings on the smaller uninhabited islands. He has also contributed a great deal to the knowledge of the natural history of Scilly.

Someone who made a huge contribution to the understanding of the early Scilly environment was Frank Turk, who had lived in Cornwall from 1939 with a collection of 14,000 books and a private museum of specimens. Dr Turk was a polymath whose interests ranged from Chinese and Japanese culture to poetry, Siamese cats, art and music, and the natural sciences. He wrote papers on many natural history subjects; he was an expert on mites, myriapods, false scorpions, mammals and animal bones from archaeological sites. His studies of animal bones found on archaeological sites in Scilly have given us a detailed picture of the species of birds and animals that formerly inhabited the islands. His wife Stella Turk worked in tandem with her husband for many years, supporting his work. Stella Turk was born in Scilly, on St Mary’s, but emigrated with her family to New Zealand when she was two, returning to Cornwall when she was seven. Stella is perhaps best known for her work on land and marine molluscs and other invertebrates, as well as her book Sea-shore Life in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (1971). Stella retired from her work at the Cornwall Biological Records Unit in 1993, since when she has continued to give her time voluntarily, entering thousands of records on the ‘Erica’ database of Cornish records. In January 2003 Stella’s contribution to Cornish natural history was recognised when she was awarded the MBE in the New Year’s Honours.

It was when I first visited Scilly and stayed at the St Agnes Bird Observatory at Lower Town Farm that I met Hilda Quick, the resident birdwatcher and a force to be reckoned with. Miss Quick, as she was always called, moved to her cottage just a few metres from Periglis beach, St Agnes, in 1951. When the bird observatory first started up in 1957 she was at first greatly opposed to the use of mist-nets and would cut birds out of the nets if she found them.

FIG 23. ‘Birdwatching from a boat’. A woodcut by Hilda Quick of herself, from her book Birds of the Scilly Isles (1964).

FIG 24. ‘Seabirds’. Another of Hilda Quick’s woodcuts, produced in her tiny cottage by Periglis beach, St Agnes.

Fortunately she was eventually won over and although she probably merely tolerated ringing, she nevertheless became a stalwart friend and supporter of the bird observatory. She wrote Birds of the Scilly Isles (1964), a small volume illustrated with her own woodcuts (Figs 23 & 24), and also edited the Scilly records for the Cornwall Bird Report for many years. Her hand-printed and very original Christmas cards were a delight to receive. If especially favoured, you might be invited in for a glass of wine made from local wild flowers. In this she was quite an expert and enjoyed demonstrating the difference between wine made from ling flowers and that made from bell heather. Miss Quick kept her elephant-size copy of Audubon’s Birds of America propped open for visitors to admire in her cottage.

The St Agnes Bird Observatory was started by a group of enthusiastic London birdwatchers and ringers. The first year they camped, but in 1958 they moved into Lower Town Farm. The founder and organiser was John Parslow, then working at the British Trust for Ornithology’s Ringing Office, based in the Bird Room at the Natural History Museum. John later went to join David Lack’s team at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology in Oxford, working on bird migration. The unoccupied farmhouse building was rented from Lewis and Alice Hicks of the Lighthouse Farm, who took a great interest in the doings of the birdwatchers. It was in Lewis Hicks’ boat Undaunted that many of the ringing expeditions to the bird sanctuary island of Annet were made. Perhaps part of their interest was due to their youngest son Francis, who was a small boy at the time and an avid birdwatcher. Before he went away to school on the mainland Francis had an extraordinary bird list, with many great rarities, but no woodpeckers, owls or other common birds! Francis now runs the farm, still finding rare birds; he always wears a pair of binoculars, even when working on his tractor.

Two other enthusiastic birdwatchers at the time were Ruth and Gordon George. Gordon was a farm labourer who worked for Lewis Hicks, and he and his wife Ruth lived in a cottage (now the Turk’s Head pub) by the quay at Porth Conger. They not only kept a lookout for any new birds that had arrived, but encouraged the birdwatchers to stop off at their cottage for a ‘second breakfast’ after the morning circuit of the island. This usually ensured a coffee and a generous wedge of the fruit cake Ruth baked specially for the birdwatchers.

The early days of running an observatory on a small, inhabited island had their problems, such as when the young daughter of the island’s postmaster and her pony rode into a mist-net. Even in its short life, the observatory carried out very valuable work as part of a network of bird observatories around the country. Unlike the big, manned observatories with resident staff, places like St Agnes were run on a shoestring, with a committee who organised the finance and bookings as well as the teams of volunteer ringers and observers. During the life of the observatory it attracted many of the well-known ‘names’ of the ornithological world. Some stayed in the hostel-type accommodation at the observatory and others brought their families and stayed at guesthouses on the island. Many of these have remained loyal to the islands and have returned many times since.

Over the eleven years of its existence the Observatory Committee recorded breeding success, migrants and ringing in an annual report. Although it officially closed in 1967 when the farmhouse became uninhabitable, the logs were maintained for another two years (the logs are now lodged in the Alexander Library, Oxford). Sadly, once the observatory closed the main focus of ornithological work in Scilly was lost for a time. More recently there have been ringers on a regular basis, as well as individuals carrying out scientific work, seabird surveys for example. Most of this work is now coordinated by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. Perhaps the best-known spin-off from the observatory days was the upsurge of the ‘twitching’ phenomenon, which started with a group of London birdwatchers some of whom were regular visitors to the observatory. They had found that the cyclonic conditions in the Atlantic in autumn could lead to the arrival of North American birds on Scilly, as well as the European migrants that arrived with easterlies. Now autumn in Scilly is a phenomenon in itself, with the arrival of hundreds of birdwatchers every October.

Frank Gibson is the fourth generation of the Gibson family to be a professional photographer in Scilly. Many of Frank’s superb photographs of landscape, seas and wildlife have been reproduced in numerous books and publications about Scilly, including several on plants and other natural history subjects. Several photographs from the Gibson collection (which includes photographs by earlier members of the Gibson family) are reproduced in these pages. One of Frank’s collaborators on several books and booklets about the natural history of Scilly was David Hunt, who came to Scilly in the early 1960s, initially as gardener at the Island Hotel on Tresco. Later he moved to St Mary’s, where over the years he carved a niche for himself as the ‘Scilly Birdman’, despite great difficulties in making a living as an independent guide, lecturer and local bird expert. He was responsible for writing a ‘code of conduct’ for birdwatchers which helped to improve relations between islanders and birdwatchers. David’s autobiography, Confessions of a Scilly Birdman (1985), was published posthumously after his career came to an untimely end in northern India in 1985, when a tiger killed him as he was leading a birdwatching tour. When I saw him shortly before his final trip, he mentioned his need to get a good photo of a tiger; his camera was recovered after the accident and when the film was processed he had indeed secured a good picture of the tiger that killed him.

After David Hunt’s death his friend Will Wagstaff continued the slide shows and guided walks that had become very popular with visitors. Will had, like many other birdwatchers, first come to Scilly on holiday, returning every year from 1975 until he eventually moved to St Mary’s in 1981. For a while Will worked for the Isles of Scilly Environmental Trust (now Wildlife Trust) as field officer until becoming a self-employed tour leader and lecturer. When the Isles of Scilly Bird Group was started in 2000, by a group of resident birdwatchers, Will was the first Honorary President. The ISBG publishes the excellent Isles of Scilly Bird & Natural History Review annually. With a nucleus of resident birders on the islands there has been an increase in observations during the winter months, and indeed throughout the year. This has culminated in the production of another book on the birds of Scilly (Flood et al., in press).

During the twelve years he lived on St Mary’s Peter Robinson carried out ringing and population studies as well as organising surveys on behalf of RSPB, JNCC and English Nature, including ‘Seabird 2000’ and the Breeding Bird Atlas. In 2003 his interest in the islands and their ornithology culminated in the publication of The Birds of the Isles of Scilly. This monumental work reviewed the birds of Scilly from historic references up to the present day.

The Environmental Trust for the Isles of Scilly was set up in 1986. In 2001 the Trust became the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, the forty-seventh member of the Wildlife Trusts partnership in the UK. Based on a total land area of 3,065 hectares at LAT (lowest astronomical tide), the Trust is responsible for 60 per cent of Scilly, with 1,845 ha leased from the Duchy of Cornwall. A very small trust, with only three members of staff in 2006, they have an unusually challenging operation, working in an island situation where all the tools, machinery and volunteers have to be transported by boat from St Mary’s to other islands for a day’s practical management work. During 2000 the Trust took on the disused 1900 Woolpack gun battery on the Garrison, which has now been refurbished and is used as a custom-built volunteer centre with accommodation for thirteen volunteers, including an underground meeting room.

Many films and TV programmes are made on Scilly. Andrew Cooper first visited Scilly in 1981, and made several films about the natural history of the islands, Isles Apart, Secret Nature and Lost Lands of Scilly. He also wrote Secret Nature of the Channel Shore (1992) and Secret Nature of the Isles of Scilly (2006). While working on the films Andrew spent many months in Scilly, observing and filming the wildlife. He was the first person to photograph caravanning behaviour of Scilly shrews. Andrew is Vice-President of the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust.

In recent years a number of other naturalists, both local and visiting, have made their unique contributions to our understanding of Scilly’s wildlife. Local diver Mark Groves has written and lectured on the marine life of the islands, photographing many underwater subjects. St Agnes farmer Mike Hicks records and writes about moths, and local restaurateur Bryan Thomas’s superb photographs are a regular feature of the Isles of Scilly Bird Report and Natural History Review. Martin Goodey, who runs Trenoweth Research Station, is also an enthusiastic photographer of birds and insects. For many years Stephen Westcott has been studying the Scilly population of grey seals Halichoerus grypus (Fig. 25). He works from a kayak, which enables him to get very close to the animals with minimal disturbance.

FIG 25. Grey seal among tree mallow. (David Mawer)

Lower plants have not been forgotten, and have been studied by Bryan Edwards (lichens), David Holyoak, Jean Paton and Robert Finch (bryophytes). Insects have been getting more attention too, with the papers by Ian Beavis, and a number of other entomologists, including local birdwatchers in Scilly who have now extended their interests into recording bush-crickets, stick insects and other groups. Molluscs, ferns and plants have also had their disciples. The production of the Isles of Scilly Bird Report and Natural History Review has encouraged visiting and local naturalists to publish their records and papers, making information much more readily available. A number of contributors to the Review have been very generous with information and illustrations for this volume and are acknowledged elsewhere.

CHAPTER 5 St Mary’s (#ulink_725d24d1-0af0-5184-bde2-672806d2a03e)

Not a tree to be seen, but there are granite piles on the coast such as I never saw before, and furze-covered hills with larks soaring and singing above them.

George Eliot (1857)

ST MARY’S IS THE largest of the Isles of Scilly at 649 hectares (above MHWS) and approximately 4km x 3km from coast to coast. Only on St Mary’s is there enough metalled road to merit any kind of bus service or any traffic as such. There are just over seventeen kilometres of road that link most of the communities on St Mary’s. Besides being busy with local and farm traffic, the sightseeing buses, the hire bikes and the taxi cabs all use the road to provide a service for the holidaymakers who flock to the island in the summer (bringing your own car to Scilly is not advised).

Away from the sea the interior of the island is gently undulating with a slightly more ‘mainland’ feel due to a largely cultivated landscape with small hamlets scattered among the farms. Many of the fields are arable and often have interesting weed floras, usually including some of the arable plants now becoming increasingly rare in Britain. The field boundaries, consisting of pine windbreaks, evergreen and elm ‘fences’ (hedges), and stone ‘hedges’, all have their particular natural history and landscape features. The unfarmed land, comprising grassland, wetlands and heath, is mostly around the coast. Also around the coastal areas are spectacular rocky headlands, cliffs, sandy bays and dunes. The ‘main’ road forms a figure of eight round the middle of the island, with a few other small sections of made-up road linking the hamlets. Farmland away from the road is generally inaccessible to the general public except were served by footpaths. There is a coastal path round the island and a system of footpaths that mostly link the roads with the coast, or access the nature reserves.

THE BUILT-UP AREA