Excitement at the beach!

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We don’t go to the seaside all that often, because it’s at the very least two hours’ drive from here, and when we do go the closest places have sandy beaches, so there was a lot of excitement this week when we were in part of the country close to a rocky coastline where there was a chance of finding some rock pools! We managed to get the tide times right so we would be there at low tide, and sure enough there were plenty of pools to look in. We saw plenty of seaweed of course in red, pink, green and brown, lots of limpets and periwinkles, barnacles covering the rocks, a good many anemones, some tiny shrimps, and quite a few dead crabs, but no live animals larger than a few millimetres until I spotted a small shell scuttling across the sandy floor of a pool – a hermit crab! Hermit crabs are pretty common and not really in the same league as seeing some more exotic wildlife, but nevertheless they are extremely cute and quite surprising - and exciting enough, if you’ve never seen one before! I picked up the shell and put it on the palm of my hand and waited. Little One was pestering me to tell her what I’d found but I told her to just wait… and after a little while the hermit crab suddenly popped out and started to scuttle around in a rather ticklish way. Little One was desperate to hold it and at the same time too squeamish to do so, the internal conflict was very amusing! Eventually, after repeated reassurances that the crab wouldn’t nip her with its tiny claws, Herman the hermit crab was transferred to her hands (and wasn’t dropped) and then after a minute or two, carefully returned to his rock-pool home. The photo is a bit blurry but it isn’t easy to take a photo with one hand while trying not to drop a scuttling crab with the other! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2024.