The Safari is still unable to get round Patch 1 but the shortest of varients this morning produced a very early rising Brown Hawker hawking for victims around a neighbour's Privet flowers.
Patch 2 was useless, a distant Grey Seal and although the Common Scoters were still out to the north west we could only make out about 2,500 in the very shimmery hazy conditions.
Later in the morning we went out on the beach for our National Marine Week event.
The usual numbers of Brown Shrimps (top two - eyes close together) and Common Prawn (bottom - eyes out on sidwards pointing stalks) made it into the trays.
A bit of a seaweed masterclass coming up...a trawl of the rockpools came up with the following selection
1. Sea Oak 2. Hornwort - not actually a seaweed but a colonial animal 3. Purple Laver 4. Sea Lettuce 5. Gut Weed 6. Spiral Wrack 7. Bladder Wrack 8. Knotted WrackThis is just about all the common seaweeds there are on the coast here and are easy to find.
At last a few Sand Gobies were netted.
As was a Common Sand Star
Pride of place goes to the last two pics - what on earth are they???
As was a Common Sand Star
Pride of place goes to the last two pics - what on earth are they???
The first was found in the rock pools and whizzed around like a Whirling Dervish - absolutely non-stop. Very luck to get such a crisp pic of it and with the naked eye never thought it would look like that.
The other is obviously very closely related but this was netted from the surf as the tide rose. It did the Whirlking Dervish thing for brief moments when disturbed but soon went back to ploughing its furrow.
If anyone has any inkling of what they might be - are they Isopods, Amphipods or something else? - please give us a clue...
Where to next? More National Marine Week stuff tomorrow but this time on Central Beach - somwhere we don't get to explore all that often.
The other is obviously very closely related but this was netted from the surf as the tide rose. It did the Whirlking Dervish thing for brief moments when disturbed but soon went back to ploughing its furrow.
If anyone has any inkling of what they might be - are they Isopods, Amphipods or something else? - please give us a clue...Where to next? More National Marine Week stuff tomorrow but this time on Central Beach - somwhere we don't get to explore all that often.
In the meantime let us know what unknown weird stuff is lurking in your outback.
2 comments:
I`ve said this before, Dave. I wished i lived by the coast. So much more to see on a daily basis, there.
Hi Dave, The first is Eurydice, an isopod. If you find a pool in the sand with some in and submerge a bare finger or toe, they'll often swim up and start crawling on you, nibbling at any dead skin or dirt. Those pretty little spots on it are actually chromatophores. Having difficulty making out the second one though...
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