Rockpools

Fanore beach is great for rockpooling as the rocky Burren stops right at the edge of the beach, so each low tide you get massive rockpools on top of the slabs of limestone.

Fanore Beach

Bug Mad Girl did some rockpooling, in her own special way. Wet suit on, she got in and sat in the rockpools. She found out that you can feed little snails to the Beadlet Anemones. If you drop a snail onto their tentacles, they will pull it in (presumably to their mouths), so the whole snail disappears.

We saw lots of anemones, limpets, whelks, mussels and top shells. There were patches of baby mussels, in dips in the rock, in sort of mussel nurseries.

Mussels

Mussel nursery in a dip in the rock

Periwinkle

Beadlet anemone and Top Shells

Whelk eating some Mussels

 

We found a Strawberry Anemone, which was similar to a Beadlet Anemone, but much brighter pink and had spots on the outside.

Strawberry Anemone

Bug Mad Girl caught a shore crab that was covered in barnacles and seaweed. When she turned it over, she realized it had a parasitic barnacle living on it (the yellow thing underneath it).

 

We saw a Heron fishing in the sea and then saw some Hooded Crows that were collecting Periwinkles. To crack them open, they were dropping them on a stone picnic table. They’d fly up, drop it then hunt around on the ground for it. They’d repeat this several times until they cracked it open. Clever birds!

A heron hopping between the rocks

Hooded Crow looking for the Periwinkle he deliberately dropped

#100DaysOfNature Day 38
Hooded Crows hunting for periwinkles

On the edge of the sand dunes, we saw some very curly snails and noticed that the wire fence was covered in chrysalises that all seemed to have hatched. The caterpillars must have eaten something growing in the dunes, then crawled up the fence to pupate.