A great find on the beach

The Safari is back at work now and so Patch 2 it is. This morning it was lashing down but we able to wait til it had died off a bit. Getting to the wall we saw the tide was in, we've not been taking much notice of the tides while we were off. A tiny movement where we put the scope made us look closer and it was a small caterpillar no more than 2cm long.

Any one any ideas. Late Edit - Small Tortoiseshell...dohh we shoulda known that one, but it was out of context - any lame excuse will do.
Looking out there wasn't much to see on the sea just a couple of distant Gannets.

Mid-morning we had a job to do. Next week we've got some kids' groups on the beach but we can't access it from our normal place due to the engineering works so we had to find somewhere else suitable. We had a walk towards town and eventually found the best place was on the far side of the pier. A quick scoot around as the tide was dropping off the wall had us finding a large Cuttlefish bone.

A bit more scootling about had us finding our first jellyfish of the year, a small Moon Jelly.

On the way back we spotted a Grey Seal only a few yards off the wall so out came the phone again. Now with our naked eye we could see it easily and could even just about make out its whiskers...the phone on the other hand...and this is a heavy crop!

That tiny black speck in the centre of the circle is a Grey Seal's head - Honest!!!

Look at the size of that Cuttlefish!

At lunchtime we got out again and although the rain had stopped the air was now so hazy it was almost impossible to focus the scope at anything more than 1/2 - 3/4 mile. A quick scan gave us two male and a female Eiders going towards the river along the surf line. We soon picked up a few Manx Shearwaters, we seen a single one (168, P2 #53) yesterday. We saw more in the haze and in the end had well over a hundred at all ranges from quite close behind the surf to wobbly blobs on the horizon. In amongst the shearwaters were a small number of completely unidentifiable auks. There were more Gannets to including some that were fishing using very shallow dives so we assume the fish were pretty close to the surface.

Three Common Terns from the dockland colony passed us as did about half a dozen Sandwich Terns and there's still a few Common Scoters out there. And small flocks of both Ringed Plover and Dunlin went south towards the nearly exposed mudflats.
JD had almost exactly the same birds but we didn't get his Little Egret, that probably came off the salt-marshes in the river to the south of us.

After work we dropped a printed off copy of our children's story to a good friend and had a good old chat. As we left she showed us her Nuthatch nesting in her box, well we saw the box, but how bonkers for it to be there when they seem to have just about disappeared from their usual haunts in the big park. On her Silver Birch tree we both spotted an unusual looking fly.

Any ideas anyone

Where to next? A weekend means we'll be out and about on safari somewhere.We've got some stealth-cam footage to look through too, hopefully there'll be something worth sharing.

In the meantime let us know who's climbing the trees in your outback.