Hi, I'm Rudi, i'm 8 years old and my favourite book is 'Tarka the Otter' by Henry Williamson. Its about the life of an otter named Tarka and British Wildlife. One night i was reading the book with my dad and i said that i wanted to see all the animals in the book, he said i should do it and call it the Tarka Challenge. My Tarka Challenge started on 1st January 2012. The book contains 89 birds, 54 land based animals, 120 plants and 56 aquatic organisms.

The rules are simple, i must either see each thing myself or photograph it using my trail camera. I will try and see each thing on my local patch (Ogmore River Catchment) but may need to look somewhere else in Britain.

Quadruple after school trip

We went for a quick trip down the beach after school with my home made prawn net


Climbing down over the rocks we found.....


Sea Thrift (Armeria maritima) also known as Sea Pink
This little plant likes salty air that you find at the beach and will grow in the crevices of rocks.

When we got to the pools we set off with bucket and nets....


The first thing we caught was a very angry Velvet Swimming Crab that wouldn't let go of the net....


Swimming Crab (Portinidae)
These are very aggressive and snap their claws at anything within attacking distance. They have blue bits on their claws and red eyes. I was quite glad when it eventually let go of my net and went swimming off into the rock pool.


Next up i caught a load of Prawns, this was the biggest one...





Prawns (Palaemonidae)
These are the scavengers of the rock pool eating up all the little dead bits of everything else. I do like to eat Prawns and latter in the year we will keep some of the catch to eat at home. This time of year though the females are carrying eggs (you can just see them in the black bit of the belly in the photo). When they have eggs they are known as 'berried'. So we put these ones back and will wait until later in the year to catch some for dinner.

I also caught a few Blennies


Blenny (Lipophyris pholis)
These big eyed fish hide under stones and seaweed in rock pools. They like to eat crunchy things like barnacles and small crabs


And we saw a lot of Anemoes (Actiniidae)


Off the list

Blenny
Prawn
Crab
Sea Thrift
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 June 2012 at 12:34

    I LOVE your blog. It's really inspirational and it has got me interested in wildlife more. I love looking at the pictures. It's amazing. Keep up the good work!

    Sophie (age13)

    PS. I found out about your blog in Wildlife Watch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rudi30 June 2012 at 02:59

    Thanks for looking, i'm glad you liked it.

    Rudi

    ReplyDelete

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