Thursday 8 May 2014

Back on the golden sands again

The Safari was out on Patch 2 this morning but there wasn't really much happening apart from about a dozen Arctic Terns and a small number of Sandwich Terns blogging about to the north.
Once the preliminaries were over it was on to the main event - the other half of Yr 2.
The wind had died to npothing and although it was cooler than yesterday it was far more pleasant on the beach.
It wasn't long before sharp eyes were gleaning the sands for wildlife treasure.
OK so they couldn't refind the Scale Worm but large Green Shore Crabs were disentangled gently the from the nets. A few Common Prawns of extraordinary size were netted as were some super sized Brown Shrimps. The Edible Whelk's eggs picked off the top of the sandbank gave us several Speckled Sea Lice once placed in the water.
All exciting stuff!
It's a juvenile Green Shore Crab she's showing her friend
One of the teachers knows the best places to find Common Sand Stars and didn't disappoint this class with several small ones found.
 Literally handfuls of different shells were collected.
At the end of the session all the live creatures had to be returned to their hiding places, this Green Shore Crab was intent on wreaking some serious revenge on the kiddies before scuttling off to wait for the tide to come in.
Never noticed the dimorphic (is that the right word?) pincers before...how'd that happen. Checking a few google pics it's not unusual, normal even; we'll be looking more closely from now on and pointing it out to our pupils.
We're already looking forward to this school's visit next year.




It seems we drove UNDERNEATH a flock of Swifts on the way back to Base Camp - arrrggghhh - and didn't see any swooping low of the park lake as we drove past there in the rain either!
Where to next? Got a beach clean to do tomorrow so there may well be sometjing to find on the beach again. and then there's the small matter of something Mr PW has found that we really hope sticks around until the weekend - we can feel a twitch coming on!
In the meantime let us know what's been sneakily dimorphic in your outback


2 comments:

Warren Baker said...

Good luck with that ''something'' davyman, a stunning bird ! :-)

Steve Finnell said...
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