A bit of beach work today

The Safari met up with Year 3 on the beach this morning. Some of them despite being born and bred in town had never been on the beach before! Time to get them activated and learning about the fantastic wildlife that can be found there. 

The recent run of easterly winds have kept the waves at bay and at first glance there didn't seem to be many shells to be found. We asked then to find long shells, round shells, little shells, big shells, pointy shells and colourful shells; the children were eagle-eyed and soon had buckets full of goodies. Pod Razors and Rayed Trough Shells were the most numerous followed by Edible Mussels, Edible Cockles and Prickly Cockles. Many of the Mussels had Barnacles growing on them, one had an enormous Barnacle attached to it, sadly it was a bit bashed and incomplete.

 As well as shells there were quite a few Sea Gooseberries found but all were dead and we couldn't show the eager faces the pulsating jelly mass with its flickering lights as its cilia catch the light.

Then one of the children pointed out a worm cast from a Lugworm but that wasn't quite as good as the next child who found a live worm we've never seen before! As soon as we got back to the office we sent the pic to our eminent marine biologist DB who reckons it's a species of Bristleworm, probably this one.

Another bristly find was a rather badly damaged Bristle Star. Several large bits of Sea Potato were found, they are so fragile it's rare to find unbroken ones. The only crab that was found alive was a tiny Green Shore Crab, the only dead crab was just three legs of a much larger individual. A large Gammerid shrimp was discovered in the bucket of shells, probably snuck out of a shell, only one of the children found a Brown Shrimp and that was a small one.

No look at patch 2 today.

Back at Base Camp we'd had the Stealth-cam out today and it captured these Magpies enjoying Frank's old kibbles.

Where to next? There's a bit of a wind picking up but its blowing offshore so might not bring anything our way, but as always with wildlife you just never know.

In the meantime let us know if you're going to get snow in your outback.