Beach Art

The flotsam and jetsam has risen up on Haverigg shingle bank and stands sentinel.

In the stillness of the day nothing moved

The little mountain of Black Combe watches over sea and land

And still nothing moves

The jellyfish does not want to be here down in the sand it wants to move;

and dreams of the pools left behind by the tide.  We move on -

and in the distance see another sentinel on top of the sand dunes

From the sea to dune

an everlasting supply of tide washed buoys to gather and to string up on the skyline by our mystery artist.

Nature's art of tide and time is also gathering, perhaps to grow another shingle bank

of the beach pebbles remnants from deep time.

Coastal Cinnabar

Walking the beach in summer this stripy creature wiggled into view, a cinnabar moth caterpillar.  I wondered what it was doing out here on the shingle bank between channels and shore and nowhere near its usual haunt, feeding on the bright yellow ragwort.  It takes in poison from the ragwort leaves as it feeds so maybe a bird had picked it up and then gone, yuk ,with the foul taste, and dropped it. You can only see a couple of its spines on my photo but they are venomous enough to create a itchy rash on human skin if one were to pick it up.     

Like the caterpillar the shoreline is on the move and the shingle bank keeps changing and growing

and is now popular for a walk along and night fishing.

Rattle your way down the pebble banking and sand is soon reached again.  Returning to the cinnabar moth seen all along the coastal area here

Creative Commons : Sharp Photography

it takes its name from the red mineral (which used to be ground and used by artists as the red pigment, vermilion).  Whichever naturalist named it in the mists of time must have known both minerals and moths because the mineral contains mercury so like the moth is poisonous.

Creative Commons: Sharp Photography

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet this week sojourning at C here