Star Jelly - A Mystery

-

 The weather was much more pleasant yesterday so I ventured into the Howgill Hills which rise to around 600m and I walked to Green Bell which lies on the watershed of the Eden and Lune river catchments. I heard distant sounds of pink footed geese from  Greenside Tarn and enjoyed pleasant views out across the valley (pictures later) but the incident I am logging today is the discovery of a couple of lumps of "Star Jelly".


You would imagine that in this day and age it would be relatively easy to identify this - not so. Such instances have been recorded since the 14th Century with one writer describing "certain mucaligous substances lying on the earth" and there is no shortage of social media posts these days pondering their cause. The ancient view was that these blobs  of jelly fell to Earth following meteor showers (rubbish!) hence the name. Other people have suggested paranormal influences (complete rubbish ) , one recent light hearted post on a Scottish Mountaineering site suggested "elfin afterbirth"! (complete bollocks!).
Slightly more scientific suggestions have been that it is some sort of slime mould, but this particular deposit doesn't appear to be growing on rotting material so it seems unlikely in this case. The most plausible cause to my mind is that this jelly like deposit has been regurgitated by an animal or bird. Apparently frog and toad oviducts produce this sort of jelly (as in frogspawn) and this indigestible lump is  produced when the predator sicks it up. I would be very interested to hear from anybody who knows better.
The following images show my route and a couple of views of the Howgills.



Diary Notes
As described , yesterday was taken up with a walk in the hills. It is obvious that in the last 10 years the once bare flanks of the Howgills are now being covered with areas of tree planting. This is a very welcome initiative to re-wild the area and increase biodiversity. It is hoped that it will also slow down the run off of water and alleviate the flooding in the area that is ever more of problem given the recent changes in the climate. The Woodland Trust have published a video on their work at Tebay which is just a few miles from where I was walking.  Woodland Trust Video
Last nights camera trap showed a couple of badgers at around 2.00am.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Dunnock

-
Image
 When I was a boy my first bird book described "hedge sparrows" but at some time in the last 50 years this name has all but disappeared and these birds are now called dunnocks (as they are not closely related to House and Tree Sparrows) Its easy to miss a dunnock! They are little brown birds and they tend to feed on the ground and keep to the cover of vegetation if they can. The males are territorial and the birds pair up in the spring. The pair are not strictly monogamous and the female will mate with another male if she gets the chance. DNA testing reveals that a brood often has more than one father. The male dunnocks are alert to this possibility and can sometimes be seen pecking at the cloacal opening of the female in an attempt to get her to expel the sperm of the competitor. The sexes look alike and these birds are common and widespread in Britain. The males get involved in feeding young according to their breeding success so it is common to find two males and one femal...
Read more

White Clawed Crayfish

-
Image
 I went for a walk yesterday that took me along the Scandal Beck (a tributary of the River Eden). On the banks of the river was a stone that had obviously been used as a picnic table by an otter and the remains of his meal were strewn about. A recognisable part of the leftovers is shown below. It's clear that this claw comes from a white clawed crayfish. These animals are not common in the UK as they need the water to be rich in calcium. This requirement is fulfilled in the Eden valley by the limestone substrate. I think that the River Eden is as far North as theses animals get. I know that there are crayfish in this part of the system because for a number of years I have volunteered with the Eden Rivers Trust to survey them. It was not uncommon to find a couple of hundred animals in a 300m stretch of river. The following images give an indication of scale. In recent years the population of the native white clawed crayfish has been threatened by the arrival of the invasive signal (...
Read more

Otters

-
 Well another Covid lockdown! As I am confined to the local area I have been having a closer look at the local wildlife. I treated myself to a trail cam and started to see what I could find. After a couple of experimental sessions to get to know the kit I set the camera along a fence line by an old railway track. On the first night I was astonished to get footage of an otter carrying a rabbit! The site is at least 500m from a watercourse which is a drainage ditch that eventually flows into a tiny tributary of the River Eden I hadn't realised that otters eat anything other than fish but apparently they do. I wonder why the otter was carrying the rabbit rather than eating it where it was found. Perhaps it was feeding young? Apparently ottters have young throughout the year. I have only seen an otter near the house once before and that was a late night encounter in the car headlights.
Read more