It was quite stony and wet down there. I used to spend a lot of time puddling around at the estuary edge. Must get back to that kind of mucking about stuff. It's fun.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
By the water
I took a stroll down to the estuary (3 minute walk) armed with my camera. The sun was just about to set and the water was slightly riffled. I poked around for a while, spotted a family of four kingfisher and worked out where their burrow was, found a couple of nice ventifacts then settled on photographing mud snails. Can a mud snail be beautiful? They're kinda muddy and snaily, but maybe in the right light.
It was quite stony and wet down there. I used to spend a lot of time puddling around at the estuary edge. Must get back to that kind of mucking about stuff. It's fun.
It was quite stony and wet down there. I used to spend a lot of time puddling around at the estuary edge. Must get back to that kind of mucking about stuff. It's fun.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
All snails can be beautiful!
These are Amphibola crenata, quite interesting to us snail nerds since they have air-breathing lungs (like landsnails) and and operculum, the 'shell dooor' like the Cat's Eye's Cat's Eye (like sea snails). They also have larvae which can swim, which most air-breathing snails have lost. Very rare to have these traits associated with and air-breathing snail.
That's interesting David. Little snaily lungs eh, with a hole in their sides, like a slug? They create donuts of spawny/eggy/sandy stuff that covers the sandy estuary bed sometimes. I've never seen, or not recognised their swimming larvae and will do some research. I really like the snails and have long planned to build a huge model for the Christmas parade - a Golden Estuary Snail to celebrate the wonderful estuary we live beside. It's amazing to learn that in biological terms an estuary is many, many times more productive than the farmland that surrounds it. There's a message in that.
The larvae are tiny, you won't see them without a microscope. And yup, they do have a pneumostome (breathing pore) but the lung is streached out over the first whorl of the body - you can often see snail lungs by illuminating them through thin shells.
I once saw a HUGE one in the original Dr Dolittle (and it was real, my mother assured me).
I thought it was Dr Dolittle that was in the huge snail Suz.
And yes, quite real, just like James, who was in the giant peach.
Well I never David! Never did see a snail's lung before. Great photo. I'll give it a shot when next I catch a one of the mouthyfoots!
Post a Comment