Wild Mull

Martin Jones, Stephen Littlewood

Description

High above the mountaintops on the Isle of Mull, a huge bird is soaring. Its all-encompassing gaze records people in its Hebridean territory far below, but they are of no interest. The eagle is about its business: concentrating on the deer and fidgety hares out grazing in the morning sun, the urgent push of thermals beneath its wings, a threatening weather front way out at sea, and the restless chick back in its eyrie. This is Mull in its glory. This is what the excited, watching people have travelled so far to witness. They train their binoculars and admire, perhaps envy, the eagle with its vast freedom, knowing that such a self-willed being is part of another world – almost.

This book guides the reader through that world. With superb illustrations and illuminating text, we are led to the wild side of Mull. Every facet of the island’s natural history is considered, its diverse species and many stories – past, present and future. Along the way we are reminded that wildness is not somehow separate from the human world but influenced, and shared, by nature and people together. 

Here is the tale of a precious and unique place, a seaborne landscape that displays an uncommon biodiversity and rare wildlife experiences, although today it also faces its greatest challenges. Most of all, this book is testimony to the power of wild places and the duty we have to learn from and protect them.

Foreword by Mark Cocker

Introduction

1 The Fairest of the Isles

2 The Land that Holds the Life

3 People and the Shaping of Mull

4 Invasions, Extinctions and Mull’s Own ‘Gene Genie’

5 Fangs, Fins and Fur

6 Raptors of Eagle Island

7 In Their Element – the Seabirds

8 Extraordinary Landbirds

9 The Kingdom of the Celtic Rainforest

10 Plants of Place and Purpose

11 Life Beyond the Strandline

12 Beautiful Beasties

Postscript: The Forever Future

Acknowledgements and Photographers’ Credits

Bibliography

Useful Contacts for Further Information

Watching and Photographing Wildlife on Mull

List of Species Referred to in the Text

Index

Sujets

• Escocia
• Isle of Mull
• Ecology
• Île de Mull
• Scotland
• Mull
• Nature

Informations

• Publié par: Pelagic Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784272777
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 52 Mo

Extrait

Wild Mull
Lower waterfalls, Aros Park
Wild Mull
A Natural History of the Island and its People
Stephen Littlewood and Martin Jones

PELAGIC PUBLISHING
Published by Pelagic Publishing PO Box 874 Exeter EX3 9BR UK www.pelagicpublishing.com
Wild Mull: A Natural History of the Island and its People
ISBN 978-1-78427-276-0 Paperback ISBN 978-1-78427-277-7 ePub ISBN 978-1-78427-278-4 PDF
Copyright © Stephen Littlewood and Martin Jones 2021
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements and Photographers’ Credits on pp. 280–3 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Apart from short excerpts for use in research or for reviews, no part of this document may be printed or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, now known or hereafter invented or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Front cover: White-tailed Eagle flying over the sea, Isle of Mull. © George Cox / 500px Back cover: A summer view from Caliach. © Martin Jones

Langamull
Contents
Foreword by Mark Cocker
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Fairest of the Isles
Chapter 2 The Land that Holds the Life
Chapter 3 People and the Shaping of Mull
Chapter 4 Invasions, Extinctions and Mull’s Own ‘Gene Genie’
Chapter 5 Fangs, Fins and Fur
Chapter 6 Raptors of Eagle Island
Chapter 7 In Their Element – the Seabirds
Chapter 8 Extraordinary Landbirds
Chapter 9 The Kingdom of the Celtic Rainforest
Chapter 10 Plants of Place and Purpose
Chapter 11 Life Beyond the Strandline
Chapter 12 Beautiful Beasties
Postscript The Forever Future
Acknowledgements and Photographers’ Credits
Bibliography
Useful Contacts for Further Information
Watching and Photographing Wildlife on Mull
List of Species Referred to in the Text
Index
For Ollie and Joey, and Rosie

Common Tern, Croig
Foreword
I’m thrilled to write a foreword for this book, and not just because the content is superb and the whole thing visually beautiful. It is also the fact that Mull looms large in my memory and has been the setting for some of my most exciting wildlife encounters.
I was lured there originally more than 20 years ago, when the story of its most charismatic residents was spreading rapidly among the naturalist community. We’re now so accustomed to hear of these animals and of their recent steep rise in numbers – particularly of the glamour twins which the authors rightly call ‘the Mull magnets’ – that we forget just how rare it was at one time to see an Otter or White-tailed Eagle. In fact, prior to my Mull visit I’d never seen the first and my only eagle was a shape disappearing into a Suffolk autumn mist.
Even now I recall the very moment when I absorbed in full exhilarating fashion that first true encounter with a White-tailed Eagle: the bird soaring over the southern shoulder of Mull’s Ben More. It is typical of the island’s reputation as a place apart that there was not just a single bird: there were three, and of these – in case we needed comparative detail – one was a Golden Eagle.
Even more compelling was my first Mull Otter. We were on Loch Scridain as a rising tide sloshed the dark matt of bladderwrack across the boulders. The two Otters hunted among these underwater thickets and we could follow their progress by a sequence of rising bubbles, or by the weed-topped pulse of water as one nosed its submerged route through the shallows. About one in four of their dives was successful, then an Otter would come ashore and we could hear the crunch of crab or fish flesh while the creature gobbled it down with open-mouthed relish.

As always with Otters, the necessities of life turned quickly to play and the two creatures melted into one many-limbed ball of writhing, eel-like sinew. When once they managed to disentangle, the victor climbed a boulder and looked all-commanding, except for the wide plume of walrus’s whiskers and a piece of bladderwrack draped slantwise across the forehead and covering one eye, like a king with a crown tilted for comic effect.
The authors of this book rightly embrace those elements that highlight Mull’s exceptional status for wildlife. Yet what makes the project so exciting for me is the breadth of their approach. They appreciate that no single portion of this glorious Inner Hebridean island can be filleted out for exclusive treatment. The landscape can only be genuinely understood as the sum of all its parts. Stephen and Martin know this and have thus presented a fully rounded portrait of the whole natural environment.
Here are the eagles, otters and dolphins, the headline performers which generate millions of pounds in ecotourism for the island’s community. Yet here also, and treated with the same loving attention to detail, are the Orange Pox Lichen, the Porcelain Crab and the Acorn Barnacle. I love the breadth of their overview. This is my kind of book.
But it also describes my kind of place. And it is this quality in Mull that the authors celebrate and emphasise and which perhaps needs a little more explanation. For many years I have enjoyed the wildlife of East Anglia, especially the glorious coasts and wetlands of Suffolk or Norfolk, but I can barely think of a single nature-rich place that is not now a reserve or a designated landscape, complete with its array of noticeboards, visitors’ centres and slatted boardwalks. At all times in these areas you are made aware that someone else is telling you how to view the landscape and what it is worth. Don’t get me wrong: I cherish those reserves as some of the finest wildlife spots, but they are often all that is left – and my heart sinks when I reflect that they invariably exist as separate islands in a sea of industrial agriculture devoid of anything but the human project. Mull isn’t anything like that.

I once wrote that, as far as I could judge, there existed on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides ‘a more harmonious reconciliation between nature and people than anywhere else in Britain’. I don’t know why I limited it to this one island, because I cannot think of any part of the whole greater Hebridean archipelago where that same dispensation doesn’t prevail. It certainly exists on Mull. Stephen and Martin put it perfectly when they bid us recall that ‘wildness is not somehow separate from the human world. It is influenced and shared by nature and people together.’
In these extraordinary islands the inhabitants have managed to integrate their livelihoods into the wider ecosystem. There is no large gulf between place and people, between the natural and the domesticated. On Mull they are all party to one thing and it makes the place not just deeply affecting, but also somehow liberating.
Yet let’s not paint it as some kind of heaven. There are problems on the island as well. The authors are alive to the issues. They tell us about the smothering effects of non-native rhododendrons in some parts and on p. 235 you will find reference to Lulu. She was a female among a pod of Orcas resident around Mull’s coast who, when washed up on neighbouring Coll, proved to have some of the highest concentrations of toxic pollutants ever recorded in a marine mammal.
Mull isn’t utopia. But nor is it some relict of the past where we can experience how things once were and can never be again. In many ways the island is a beacon for the future and of what can happen when we come to value more deeply the restorative impact of nature. If I were to sum all this up, I would suggest that Mull is a complete place and this book is the complete guide to all of its exceptional qualities.
Mark Cocker Author and naturalist
Introduction
To deploy the ‘get-out’ clauses from the outset, and to avoid confusion and embarrassment, it should be explained that the name ‘Mull’ is used throughout much of this book as a generic title for the group of islands which, in addition to the main island, includes Iona, Ulva, Staffa, the Treshnish Isles and every islet betwixt and between. It should also be admitted that any errors or omissions rest entirely with the author – and hopefully will not detract from the original idea for this book that it should go beyond being a simple guide to the wildlife of Mull. A story that beats the drum for the island, its inhabitants and biodiversity is long overdue, but we wanted to tell a tale of natural history with all its twists and turns, including the influence of people from past to present – to explore Mull’s unique DNA, if you will – whilst also encouraging the reader to delve into the fine grain of the land- and seascape, fill in some of the gaps themselves and find their own way to the beauty and wonder of this extraordinary place.
The book is thus a paean to the entire wild nature of Mull and its surrounds, not just a walk-through of wonderful and exotic headline species. That is what zoos are for. However, ‘wild’ is a word that is much overused these days. In a truly wild state, every day is a struggle and capricious, everything has connections and relationships, and even the tiniest organism has an important role. Mull is a place of wildness significantly untamed, undeveloped and uncultivated; sparsely populated; and, most importantly, a place where exquisite flora and fauna is mostly self-willed.
Wild places in beautiful landscapes are now a commodity in short supply, fast becoming the most valued and sought after of Earth’s assets, and one that we go to great lengths and personal expense to experience for ourselves. Yet none of us is a detached observer of the wild. Simply being in a place makes us a part of it. We see ourselves as watching an eagle, but the eagle is just as keenly watching us, so wherever we are, our presence has some kind of impac