A Beach, a Fungus and a Beetle

The sea is busy rearranging what is left of the beach sediment into new patterns. This is one I recognise from my far-off days as a geography teacher - the bay-like indents are called 'cusps'. It's useless information but at my age it's heartening to be able to remember such trivia.

Because so much of the beach sand has been removed the tide comes in to the sea wall earlier, so today we discovered we could only walk on short sections of the beach. Instead, after passing the golf course, we meandered across what we now know is called Ferry Links.

These calcerous grasslands are home to a range of fungi of which this is the most interesting, as it starts as either bright red or bright yellow, then....

....fades through orange to brown before turning....

....a very handsome black. Appropriately, it's called the blackening waxcap, Hygrocybe conica, and they're common out on the links.

The daily migration of greylag geese, in skeins that can number over a hundred individuals, continues. Each time we hear them we stop to watch them pass over.

However, the highlight of our ramble today - which turned out to be a slightly wearying five miles - was this beetle, spotted by Mrs MW when she almost trod on him. I'm so pleased she didn't as he was a truly spectacular colour and, consequently, reasonably easy to identify as one of two British violet ground beetles. This one is the slightly less common species, Carabus problematicus, which is usually found in woodland or, in this case, heathland. It's an active predator which usually hunts at night.