The sea shone tantalizingly, down below us, looking as flat and polished as a mirror, but high up above it we were being buffeted by a strong wind. We were sitting on the summit of Monte Leon, which is a little hill on the coast of Sal. Down in the bay below ten or fifteen kitesurfers zoomed to and thro, making the best of the wind. Unlike the windsurfers they didn’t need a wind low down, their kites went up…
Articles by Roxanne
(with a few additional remarks by the editor-in-chief) It was early afternoon and we were in Flores, just nearing the end of one of the scenic walks for which the Azores are famous. We had started that morning, leaving Mollymawk anchored in the bay behind us, and we had now been walking, at a leisurely pace, for most of the day – along a road, up a track, along a footpath, and past a lake which had eleven waterfalls pouring…
“I wish I could introduce you to David Wingate,” said Gill. “He’s our local naturalist, and he’d love to answer all of these questions that you keep asking.” We were standing on the wooden platform which surrounds Gill and John’s house on their little islet in Bermuda, looking down towards a round black hole bored into the rock below. Inside that hole, I knew, was a plump, one week old tropic bird chick. But that was all I knew. I…
With additional text, in italics, by Jill Once again we are in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for November. This is the island’s busiest month. WOMAD, a free four-day world-music festival, starts on November the 11th and people from all over the Canary Islands get on the ferries and come to see it. The anchorage fills up with almost 60 boats, instead the usual two or three. But most of the yachtsmen have not actually come to listen to the…
This article by Roxanne appeared in somewhat abridged form in the RSBP’s junior magazine, Birdlife, last year. I was born on a boat, and ever since I was a baby we have lived aboard the boat and sailed wherever we want to go. I have never lived in a house, although I have occasionally lived in a caravan or a camper van, in different parts of the world. I wonder if it is to this gipsy lifestyle that I owe…
In this family there is one thing which really gets everyone rushing around, and that is dolphins. In the Mar Menor we didn’t see any dolphins – they don’t come into that lagoon – but Mummy and Daddy were always full of stories about heavisides dolphins here, and pilot whales there. It seems that even sightings made before I was born, twelve years ago, are still remembered in detail! There was the story about the first time Xoë and Caesar…
Beneath the waters of La Gomera there are not only large stretches of sand, but also a plentiful supply of rocky areas. For me, this makes the place very interesting, because I can watch both habitats at the same time and see the very different fish which live in each of them. The bigger fish living on the sandy bottoms rely on hunting smaller fish, and since there is no plant life there the smaller fish are scavengers. All of…
The Ship’s Naturalist is a kind-hearted girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She might catch it and feed it to a toad, of course, but she wouldn’t swat one. Nor does she eat dead pigs, cows, rabbits, sheep, or chickens – but she does have a weakness: she loves fish. At the age of four, when asked to make a list of her favourite things, Roxanne wrote, “Fish, Mummy, Chocolate.” Over the course of the past eight years the list…
If you visit the local tourist office then they’ll tell you that Valle Gran Rey was named after the Big King who once lived in this valley – but we know better. We reckon it was named by a Frenchman who was seriously impressed with the local sealife.
Last year she raised a couple of seagulls. This year there were no baby gulls to rescue, and so Roxanne has been trying her hand as a chicken farmer.
sign up for email notifications
subscribe to our RSS feed
Twitter
Facebook
Google+