Half hour blast on the beach

The Safari noted some articles in magazines today. The first two were by 'Twitcher' in British Wildlife both of which struck a chord. (20 quid of anyone's money well spent IMHO) The first about youngsters was particularly relevant in that we had a horde of rampaging young naturalists having great fun laying waste to our habitats yesterday but how many of whom will take that lesson and enjoyment further when they are older? Fortunately our Young Uns don't conform to his stereotype and do go out birding and other wildlife-ing even on their own unlike Mark Cocker's observations "So what is different today? One critical development I notice is the almost total absence of representatives of my childhood self from today’s countryside. In the last 20 years I cannot recall seeing a teenager birdwatching by themselves.

Britain’s deep collective anxiety about paedophilia has devastated the possibility of solitary activity for children. It means that there are no young people of my daughter’s generation wending their way through a self-motivated childhood of observation and intimate encounter with nature to a point where they have highly developed field skills. It means that one whole route to becoming what the grand old man of birds, Ian Wallace, would call ‘purposeful observers’ has been shut down completely. "

Hopefully they'll instil their love of all things wild on their girlfriends, when they come along, and maybe just maybe entice them away from the shallow nonsense that is make-up, fashion and Z-list celebrity that seems to be overwhelming many of the juvenile females of our species.

(He was a contempory of ours at UEA but we don't remember him from the Bird Club...having said that he probably doesn't remember us either).

The other was on the cover of either Bird Watch or Bird Watching magazine, the one with the eagle on the front, when we were waiting in the queue at the pet shop...the article headline was something about being tidy could be causing a mass extinction...something we've been harping on about for ages...and trying to get our colleagues in the Council to take up...need to get a copy and read it...

Enough meandering on with today's show...

This morning R'ouzel Puddle was devoid and Patch 2 almost so with only a solitary male Common Scoter and handful of scattered Sandwich Terns and three Great Crested Grebes to be seen on an otherwise perfect 'cetacean sea'. Also out there was a huge piece of driftwood, but perhaps not quite so big as this monster stranded on the beach.

 Not a lot was o the beach but we blasted away at the nearest Herring Gull for the sheer hell of it. Caught in flight too which almost made a cracking pic but with the gloom it was  just a bit to fuzzy so hit the digital cutting room floor.

At lunchtime we headed on to the beach after news of our coasts first Plumose Anemone yesterday...well found by our marine biologist friend DB. we soon found it, exactly where she'd told us - well it wasn't going anywhere was it?!? But again could we get a decent pic of it through the water...need a waterproof camera or at least a holder for the cameras we've got.

Did find a very freshly deceased Masked Crab complete with seaweed it's attached to itself to help camouflage it.

we spoke to a couple of fishermen coming off the beach who'd had nothing but did have a big bucket of Green and Black Lugworms. They asked a few questions about lugworms we couldn't answer hence the link from our research.

They were genuinely gobsmacked we'd seen the Bottle Nosed Dolphins a couple of weeks ago, likewise we were gobsmacked when they said they'd had a short session off one of the piers last week and caught eight different species of fish including a Tub Gurnard which have only in the last decade moved into our waters perhaps as a response to climatically changed warmer conditions.

Where to next? Might well try again for a pic of the Plumose Anemone.

In the meantime let us know what's sneaking in to your outback almost unnoticed.