Rewilding Archives - Sustainable Penzance

With an RSPB reserve and a Marine Conservation Zone on our doorstep, Penzance and the surrounding area is home to incredible and important wildlife.

These amazing animals are a powerful reminder of why living sustainability is so important – let’s protect their home and keep Penzance a stunning place to live for us all.

Here’s six of our favourite animals to spot in and around Penzance, whether you’re visiting on holiday or exploring your local area. Remember to always keep your distance from wildlife and leave only footprints behind.

Otter

Otters are fast becoming one of Cornwall’s most loved species to spot. Marazion Marsh and Mousehole seafront are two of the local places where these adorable critters fish and swim through the waves.

If these wonderful mammals are in your local area, you’ll spot their footprints (with 4 or 5 toes around a large food pad) in soft mud or gravel. You may be able to spot their webbed feet marks in soft mud. It’s this webbing that helps them glide through the water with ease.

Chough

These beautiful birds are a proud symbol of Cornwall, although the last true Cornish chough died in the 1970s. Absent for decades, at the turn of the millennium the ‘Cornish crows’ made their natural return. A handful of choughs took up residence once again in Cornwall’s cliffs on The Lizard. One pair nested and the first wild choughs were born in 2002 for the first time in 50 years. This founding pair raised an incredible 46 chicks in total – what an amazing legacy.

The Cornish Chough Conservation Network is doing brilliant work protecting and monitoring choughs. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for these charming choughs.

Choughs have been spotted in Penwith between Pendeen and Gwennap Head, with the Cot Valley, another place to watch for these incredible birds. Lucky enough to see a chough in Cornwall? Email Cornwall Birdwatching and Preservation Society (CBWPS) at choughs@cbwps.org.uk.

Purple sandpiper

The wet and windy Cornish coast might not be everyone’s idea of the perfect winter holiday spot, but it’s milder than the Scandinavian and Arctic climate Purple sandpipers travel from for the colder months.

You’ll find these small shorebirds foraging on rocky coasts, like around Penzance’s harbour and Battery Rocks, near Jubilee Pool. These superb sandpipers can be identified by their brown/grey head and back, with a white underside with dark streaks. They also have orange/yellow short legs, and a yellow (at the base) bill which curves downwards.

Stalked jellyfish

If you’re rockpooling around Penzance’s coast, or further afield in Cornwall, keep your eyes peeled for stalked jellyfish. Not what typically comes to mind when we think of a jellyfish, the stalked kind are star-shaped (from above) or bell-shaped (from the side) – depending on your view. They have a stalk with a sucker keeping them anchored into position on seaweed or the seabed, with eight arms used to catch prey.

As stalked jellyfish numbers are declining around the UK, they are a priority species for conservation. Mounts Bay’s sheltered shores are an important site for these rare jellyfish with five different stalked jellyfish species found here. Mounts Bay Marine Group is working to protect this vital habitat for these species and others like the giant goby, plus bring people closer to our local precious wildlife.

Grey heron

Whether you’re a keen birdwatcher or a casual wildlife enthusiast, you won’t want to miss a trip to Marazion March. Not only is the marsh worth visiting for the stunning views of St. Michael’s Mount, it’s also an RSPB reserve where you can see amazing bird species. The majestic grey heron is just one of the birds you’ll spot here. When their long necks are stretched out searching for food, they are easily recognisable. These birds are known for their unusual behaviour of nesting on the ground, the only herons in the UK to do this. Watching grey herons in flight is an incredible sight.

Bonus: The Marsh is also becoming a popular spot in Autumn/Winter at sunset to witness thousands of common starlings forming dazzling ‘murmurations’ (swirling, cloud-like displays formed by birds in the sky) – one of the biggest in West Cornwall.

What are your favourite animals to spot in and around Penzance?

Huge thanks to the following organisations for their amazing animal facts:
RSPB
Cornwall Birdwatching and Preservation Society
Wildlife Trusts
Love Penzance
Operation Though
Mounts Bay Marine Group

This International Women’s Day we’re celebrating a few of the amazing women and female-led organisations making positive change happen here in Penzance, Cornwall.

Whole Again Communities (WAC):
Community led = community fed. Whole Again Communities (WAC) supports people to cook affordable and healthy meals at home from scratch, as well as using cooking to improve people’s wellbeing and sense of belonging.

One of its projects is a weekly repair cafe which not only brings the community together around food, it also helps volunteers improve their practical and personal skills – which can eventually help them find work.

“We work with people to cook to improve their health, wellbeing and confidence,” Lizzie Sullivan CEO says. “Volunteers are involved at every stage – choosing recipes, cooking, taking online orders and managing the collection system.”

Solomon Browne Memorial Hall:
Solomon Browne Memorial Hall is a central point for the community to come together to take part in events, classes and workshops in the historic fishing village of Mousehole.

One of the Memorial Hall’s exciting projects is creating a new community garden, in partnership with Mousehole School.

Tamsin Harvey from the Hall said: “We have plans to create a forest school playgroup here, run workshops and outdoor learning sessions, and to enable members of the community to use the garden improving health and wellbeing. The school are also using this garden to enhance the children’s learning and life skills.”

Growing Links:
This brilliant forward-thinking organisation uses locally-grown food to make healthy, eco-friendly food available to all, while reducing food waste. It keeps hundreds of homeless and vulnerable people and low-income families fed each day through initiatives like Food Store and the Street Food Project.

Growing Links’ director Lynne Coakley Dyer told Cornwall Live about how the volunteer-led Street Food Project kept vulnerable people fed during the pandemic, when Cornwall saw a surge in food poverty.

The organisation also runs a community garden and allotment, training and workshops, and a veg bag scheme (selling local, organic and seasonal food).

_{Councillors Jan Power (l)
and Thalia Marrington (r).}

Female local councillors:
Sustainable Penzance works with decision makers and stakeholders to get people and planet top of the agenda. We need decision makers like local politicians to stand up and enable a new way forward. In Penzance, female councillors are helping to create this greener future for Penzance.

Councillor Thalia Marrington (Liberal Democrats) represents Mousehole, Newlyn and St Buryan. She’s working to help enable sustainable transport solutions in the area. Thalia is in Parliament today for International Women’s Day as part of 50:50 Parliament, a movement empowering women to stand for election, those new voices to be heard and a new way forward.

Last month, the Green Party’s Jan Power was elected as Councillor for Penzance East Ward. We look forward to working with Jan and other councillors to create a more sustainable Penzance.

The Hypatia Trust:
Taking its name from Hypatia, an ancient Alexandria scholar – the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer of her time, The Hypatia Trust is a Penzance-based charity ensuring women’s achievements are not overlooked. It researches, publishes and exhibits women’s accomplishments, ensuring they are not lost in, or even suppressed by, written history. The image shows the Trust’s Woman of the Month, astronomer, writer and researcher Carolyn Kennett. She told the Hypatia Trust about her passion for Cornwall’s nature and fascination with the night sky.

The Gardeners House is one of the Hypatia Trust’s projects looking to preserve the botanical history of the town and reconnect people to nature.

The Gardeners’ House:
In the heart of Penzance lies Morrab Gardens. Hiding in these beautiful public gardens is a derelict stable building. Recognising this building’s potential, the Gardener’s House charity was formed to renovate this building and transform it into a green hub for the community and all those working towards a more sustainable future for Penzance. At its centre will be an internationally important botanical archive from the Hypatia Trust and Morrab Library.

Miki Ashton, from the project, says: “It would be really good to have that one place in town that is a hub for people to meet, connect and learn from each other.” We can’t wait for this new community hub.

Plastic Free Penzance volunteers:
Last but no means least, we wanted to give a shout out to the amazing female volunteers who give their time to our projects reducing plastic pollution in Penzance, helping us create the UK’s first plastic-free town.

Plastic Free Penzance (which hosts events like workshops and beach cleans) and its projects like Packswap Penzance and Refill Penzance could not happen without brilliant people like you supporting them. Feeling inspired? Volunteer and get involved.

Danielle (Dani) Boobyer.

Category: Rewilding

Penzance wildlife: 5 animals to spot on Cornwall’s coast

IWD: Celebrating Penzance’s female changemakers