After the storm

A big storm can only mean one thing ... big treasures washed up on the beach!

We took a walk along the beach in the evening and found several blue, gas-filled bags, that are Portuguese Man-of-Wars. They resemble a jellyfish, but are actually a colony of specialized individual animals that can only survive by living together and functioning as a single animal. They usually live out in the open ocean, with the gas-filled bladder floating at the top of the water and the long tentacles submerged below them. They get washed up in bad weather as they have no means of propulsion, drifting wherever the wind takes them. They can give a very nasty sting, even when washed up on the beach.

We found a couple of dead ghost crabs. They live in the sand, coming out at night to look for food. We're planning to go out to the beach with a torch after dark because you can see them running around all over the beach. They get startled by the light and dive down into the burrows in the sand. It's supposed to be quite a sight.

We also found lots of shells washed up on the beach, and although they all seemed to be only parts of a shell, we did find some cool ones.


Channelled Duck Clam - Paper thin and is also known as Sailor's Ear

Giant Atlantic cockles



Scotch Bonnet - The State shell of North Carolina
and quite a rare find



You can see the big lip and bumps on the shell



The top part of a knobbed whelk

Pear whelks

We're not sure, either a Knobbed whelk or a Channelled
whelk - It's the size of my hand!



 

Next morning we waited for low tide and searched the beach again. There were lots of great bits of shell on the beach, but if you stood in the water and looked carefully, you could spot some huge whole shells. Our best find of the day was a whole knobbed whelk, a huge conch-like shell.

 

 

 

Knobbed whelk - the state shell of Georgia

We collected several whole lettered olives

Calico scallop (left) and a buttercup lucine (right)

Complete pear whelk

Then we found a strange looking fish washed up on the beach. We found out later that it was a striped burrfish, which is a bit like a puffer fish because it can inflate itself when startled. It was still alive so we rescued it, putting it back in the sea and watching it swim away.

 

 

We found pieces of some huge crabs and shark egg cases as well.

 

 

It was all topped off by dolphins swimming along the beach right in front of us. What a brilliant place! 

 

 

 

Stormy Carolinas

We're on an adventure to North Carolina for the Easter holidays. We're staying right on the beach and arrived to the most beautiful weather...



...  it all soon changed though as a huge storm hit the Eastern side of the States. We had dramatic thunder and lightning overnight and torrential rain. It was quite spectacular watching the beach and the sea light up all night. Next morning the tail end of the storm wasn't going to stop us enjoying the beach though!

It soon cleared through and left us with sun, but very strong winds. We walked along the beach in the evening, hoping to find some big shells washed up by the storm, but the wind was blowing the sand along the surface of the beach. It was a very strange experience as it wasn't difficult to walk against the wind, it was just whipping up the sand making it look like smoke around our feet ( and stinging our legs). You could really see the force of the wind and sand as the smoothly sloping beach had been turned into a cliff face in just one day.

 

The kite surfers were out in force, making the most of the wind and the waves. They were very impressive and I think Bug Mad Girl has a new sport she'd like to try!

We had to make do with racing the waves!

We have lots of amazing wildlife to blog about over the next few days, but the weather really kick started the holiday with a bang!

Moving house

It's been a while since my last post because we've been busy moving house. We've only moved around the corner, but still had to clear out 12 years worth of clutter from our old house and pack up everything. It seemed to take forever and wasn't helped by the fact that I kept getting distracted by exciting discoveries in the house and garden ...

We found three false widow spiders lurking behind different bits of furniture. They have the same distinctive body shape as their relative the black widow spider, but don't have the red hour glass shape on their abdomen. We lived in Atlanta for several years and found a black widow in our garage. You certainly wouldn't want to get bitten by one of those ... whereas these could only give you a bite similar to a wasp sting. Bug Mad Girl wanted to keep one as a pet, but I put my foot down (not on the spiders!) and let them go at the end of the garden.

As I was packing up each room, I spotted some great birds out of the window. Most surprising of all was a huge green woodpecker that bounced around on the lawn. It was a real treat to see one so close.

I also saw greenfinches on the bird table and a beautiful thrush in a tree in the garden. Both were quite unusual visitors to our garden.

Greenfinch

Thrush

We said goodbye to our cheeky sparrow family, Whistlejacket the red kite and the wonderful long-tailed tits that fed from the window feeder every day and headed off to our new house. We were very tempted to leave a trail of bird food, hoping all our lovely birds would follow and just hoped the new garden would be as exciting as the old one ...

Long-tailed tits feeding at the kitchen window

The new garden has turned out to be a real delight and full of surprises. We arrived to a front garden full of snowdrops and crocuses, which were quickly followed by a huge blossom tree flowering, leaving confetti all over my car every day. The lawn at the end of the back garden was full of crocuses and primroses, so we'll leave it as a wild garden. It looked beautiful today in the sunshine and was full of bees and flies.

Primroses flowering in the lawn

There were lots of ashy mining bees flying around the primroses and crawling
down into the grass (presumably to nest)

I spotted my first bee fly of the year today - such strange looking flies with
their long proboscis

We haven't been disappointed by the birds we have visiting the garden either. We have a large old apple tree by the patio and the birds seem to love the protection it offers them. My favourites are the goldfinches that visit the nyger seed feeder several times a day. They're such delicate little things, all dressed up in their smart jackets.

We also have blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, blackbirds, dunnocks and several chaffinches that always seem to be around. A pair of robins keep them all in check and have been feeding each other (part of their courtship routine). I also spotted a tiny goldcrest hopping through the branches of the apple tree and I've seen a male blackcap. There are always lots of red kites around and a pair are nesting in a tall tree at the edge of the field behind the house.

A chaffinch in the apple tree

 

A fluffy long-tailed tit

The robins rule the roost

We put the window feeder up on the kitchen window again, but the long-tailed tits don't seem brave enough to use it yet. The chaffinches love it though and don't seem to care at all if we're in the kitchen.

Chaffinch

Sitting on the kitchen window ledge

We've had a couple of more unusual visitors too, including a jay on a couple of different mornings and a male pheasant that wandered around the patio.

We're all looking forward to seeing what other treasures we find over the coming months.

The kids have broken up for Easter now, so we're off on a bit of an adventure ... more of that to follow though!

Calshot!

On the 20th February, I went on a school residential trip to Calshot activities centre, which is on a spit (a little bit of land sticking out from the coastline). It's in between the Solent, and Southampton, and there were loads of activities to do there. I know this isn't the Chilterns, but I thought you would like to know about some of the brilliant wildlife we found there.

On the 3rd day there, we went trawling, and caught lots of amazing things. Our favourite was a Sea Hare, (which is a slug-like blob), which we called Blobby! He looked just like a strawberry, as he was red with white spots, and we learnt that the colour they are depends on the colour of the seaweed they eat.

Blobby!

Blobby's ink on my hand!

We also caught a huge starfish, which was way bigger than any others I've ever seen. I managed to get a picture of it compared to my hand, and it was nearly double the size!

Those little spidery things round the outside are called spider crabs, and we got lots of them! They looked just like spiders (hence the name). There was a thing called a Sea Squirt, which is a small blobby thing stuck to a rock, but it looked a lot different to blobby.

Sea Squirt

There was even a sea urchin! I got to hold it, and I nearly dropped it as it was very sharp and spiky.

Blobby (left), Sea Urchin (middle), Spider Crab (right)

We also did a thing called Beach Bonanza, which was basically rockpooling. We wandered along the beach in groups and found as many different types of living things as we could. All groups found lots of starfish, snails, seaweed, and my team even found a sea lemon, which was really cute!

The Sea Lemon - so cute in real life!

A clam shell (alive)

There was an amazing view out of the window from the room I was in. It looked out over the sea, and it was really cool to see all the huge ships go by. One night, there was even a cruise ship, it was massive, and as the night sky was pitch black you could see all the lights coming from the windows. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it.

View out the window