Pirate adventure

A blog post by Bug Mad Girl ...

Today we saw a pirate ship out in the bay. The pirates spotted us and made us look for treasure for them!

We hunted along the beach and found ...


A dinosaur footprint

Mermaid's purses - the egg cases from (possibly) an undulate ray (left),
2 small-spotted catfish (centre) and a nursehound (right)

Hornwrack - looked like rough seaweed, but it was actually a colony of animals

A cuttlefish bone, common whelk eggs and a crab leg



Fossils



Loads of different types of seaweed



and beautiful seashells, including limpets, slipper limpets, cockles,
periwinkles, top shells, thick-lipped dog whelks and a pointed snail



We weren't the only ones looking for treasure on the beach, but the gulls seemed more interested in worms!

 

The pirates weren't happy with the treasure we'd found and sent us into the rock pools to see what we could find for them. We found lots of beadlet anemones and one very pretty daisy anemone. It had it's arms spread out wide and snapped them in tight when we got too close.

 

Beadlet anemone

Daisy anemone

We tried our best to catch the pirates some crabs for their tea, but every time we threw the line in with bacon on the end, fish would dart out of the seaweed and grab the bacon. The best we could find was an empty spider crab shell (but it didn't even have any legs!)

Spider crab shell

The pirates were getting very angry and sent us up to the top of the cliff to see what treasure was up there. I found a beetle larvae on the path and moved it safely to the bushes.

Beetle larvae

There were crickets and grasshoppers jumping about everywhere. I thought they were great, but the pirates probably wouldn't have been very impressed!

 

Long antennae mean this is a cricket - really long antennae on this one!

 

Short antennae mean this is a grasshopper

A heron flew overhead and some goldfinches watched us from a nearby teasel.

Heron

Goldfinches

The swallows were sitting on a wire watching what we were doing so we decided to ask them to help us. They said we needed to find something beautiful, colourful and glittering to make the pirates happy.

Some very helpful swallows

 Then we saw the perfect treasure - there were lots of lovely painted lady butterflies fluttering around, so we collected a handful of them and took them to the pirates. They were very impressed with our amazing treasure and let us go. As soon as we were safely away, the painted ladies flew away from the pirates and were safe as well.

 It was all very exciting and a great adventure!