a splendid day out
Feb. 11th, 2006 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
axolotl9So the weather today was simply marvelous. One of those days that the postcard photographers love (as opposed to the summer, when everyone arrives expecting picture-postcard weather and is instead greeted by looming grey fog.) What can one do on a day like today? We went to the beach.
Natural Bridges State Beach is a monarch butterfly sanctuary (though of late they seem to prefer the trees around Lighthouse Point), which was celebrating the annual Migration Festival today. So we went and saw displays about butterflies, birds, and assorted marine mammals (grey whales and elephant seals, mostly.)
Then later in the afternoon, once the tide had receded, we went tide pooling.
Tide pooling is always fun - the regular denizens of the pools are interesting enough (huge anemones, assorted mollusks, the occasional sculpin, and crabs of various varieties), but after a series of storms there are often oddities. (I once found a small octopus in one. A photograph of the discovery ended up in the slide show for the Intro to Marine Science course at UCSC.) Today there were lots of skittering little shrimp which aren't usually there. We also saw olive snails, of which we have collected the shells many times, but never seen them alive.
Unfortunately, we also saw the gnarlier side of human nature. Some college students had taken a couple of the larger variety of crabs out of one of the pools and were trying to get them to fight each other. The crabs, however, were more interested in getting revenge on their tormentors. We suggested that they put the crabs back in the pool before we found it necessary to fetch the rangers.
All in all, though, it was a good day.
Natural Bridges State Beach is a monarch butterfly sanctuary (though of late they seem to prefer the trees around Lighthouse Point), which was celebrating the annual Migration Festival today. So we went and saw displays about butterflies, birds, and assorted marine mammals (grey whales and elephant seals, mostly.)
Then later in the afternoon, once the tide had receded, we went tide pooling.
Tide pooling is always fun - the regular denizens of the pools are interesting enough (huge anemones, assorted mollusks, the occasional sculpin, and crabs of various varieties), but after a series of storms there are often oddities. (I once found a small octopus in one. A photograph of the discovery ended up in the slide show for the Intro to Marine Science course at UCSC.) Today there were lots of skittering little shrimp which aren't usually there. We also saw olive snails, of which we have collected the shells many times, but never seen them alive.
Unfortunately, we also saw the gnarlier side of human nature. Some college students had taken a couple of the larger variety of crabs out of one of the pools and were trying to get them to fight each other. The crabs, however, were more interested in getting revenge on their tormentors. We suggested that they put the crabs back in the pool before we found it necessary to fetch the rangers.
All in all, though, it was a good day.
