Crepidula fornicata and more

After a cold and grey Saturday, it was a wonderful surprise to wake to brilliant sunshine and deep blue skies. After breakfast in the garden, we walked along the beach as the tide was going out and captured a few birds busily hunting food.

Have blipped this as I like the look the Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) is giving the Curlew Sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea). (If I've identified these wrongly, please shout!) Nearly blipped this lovely bird instead.

I mentioned in early March that I'd seen some weird and wonderful shells on the beach and had asked the Conchological Society to id them for me. The tangerine coloured and textured soft casing turned out to be a sea sponge. The shell it was covering is one of a stack of the slipper limpet, Crepidula fornicata. This attaches to a surface and then more individuals grow in stacks upon the first one. Does what it says on the tin, then.