Wildlife Chronicles

BEACH COMBING by Peter Cunningham

There can be few places in the Long Island to compare with our beaches on the west coast for an interesting walk. Our mild oceanic climate and our situation athwart the North Atlantic Drift and the prevailing westerly winds mean that this 130 mile barrier, much of it extensive beaches, traps any flotsam or even demersal objects. Even on those on the eastern side the sea casts up all kinds of strange and wonderful things.

Just the other day, for example, I was shown a mysterious recovery which proved to be the skull of a toothed whale, one of the smaller whales but which one I was not competent to tell, which had been found on the shore at Aignish. It was about three feet long and missing the upper jaw. It was photographed and is now in the care of the Museum.

Rarely does anyone come across outstanding items such as amber, ambergris or bottles containing messages but it is perhaps the hope of a lucky find that impels many to undertake a stroll along the strandline. Compared with the hinterland the inter-tidal area is narrow indeed but it takes patience and a sharp eye to perceive anything unusual beneath seaweed, sand or litter. These virtues, however, can be rewarded with interest. Pieces of timber riddled with holes puzzle some but are only the work of shipworms. These are not in fact worms but bivalve molluscs and may be found still attached to the wood. They were once a serious pest to untreated hulls of wooden ships. Flat, white, oval, bone-like objects about 4 to 6in (10-15cm) in length are the remains of the internal shell of cuttlefish. Brown beans, 1-2in (3-5cm) in diameter are vegetable products from the Caribbean or South America. Flat, horny, rectangular "mermaids' purses" are the empty egg cases of dogfish or rays. Those with tendrils belong to the former; those with points to the rays. The largest, nearly 6in (15cm) excluding the points, and commonest here, belong to the common skate. Rounded lumps like a bathroom sponge, pale or sandy coloured, are the egg cases of whelks. And what of the varieties of seaweed cast up on the tide line and the myriad invertebrate creatures they shelter?