Thursday, September 24, 2020

Responsible Birding Diary, Monday 21.9.20


Today’s Ferry Meadows CP, ‘vis mig’ session brought an indication of things to come with two flocks of Sky Larks, passing over, numbering 10 and 8 individuals. Other than the usual trickle of Meadow Pipits in ones and twos, though, it was a quiet session. So, after breakfast I went for a bit more fossil hunting in southern Peterborough. I found a few more little ammonites, the odd piece of crinoid stem and what I think is a ‘toadstone’, which is a round, tooth-like structure from the palate of a Jurassic bony fish called Lepidotes.

In the photo below there are the following Jurassic fossils, which haven’t been noticed for 160 million years. Top left: what I believe is a ‘toadstone and something which probably isn’t a Lepidotes scale; middle top: star shaped ossicles from crinoids (which are like stemmed feather stars); top right: a tiny bivalve above what appears to be a rounded crinoid ossicle; lower half is all bits of various types of ammonite (coiled-shelled relatives of squid and nautiloids).

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