Excitement!

We walk almost every day of the week. Today's expedition was to the further end of Golspie beach, between the caravan site and Littleferry. The sun, unexpectedly, came out, there was enough beach to walk along - although much of the sand is still missing - and we had the occasional....

....interesting find, such as this 3cm long shrimp. However, it takes more than a shrimp to turn an enjoyable walk into something a little more memorable, which is what happened when....

....we reached the mouth of Loch Fleet and spent a few minutes searching the pebbles exposed by the low tide. In amongst the rubble of mussel, razor and other shells we found....

....one and a half brittle stars, the half being one which had lost three of its five legs and looked dead whereas the complete one was very much alive.

The last brittle star I saw was in one of the rock pools below Ormsaigbeg, several years ago, and my recollection is that it is the only one I have seen in British waters. They're much more common in tropical seas such as along the East African coast and around Jamaica.

The internet tells me that there are several species of brittle star in British waters and that the most common is, fairly obviously, the common brittlestar, Ophiothrix fragilis, but this looks more like the serpent star, Ophiura ophiura, which has a larger central disk.

So I confess: something as small as finding a slightly unusual brittle star has turned this morning's walk from an enjoyable into an exciting one.