Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Beach & Bay Crabs

Ghost crabs were pretty common on the beach. Here's a big one:


The crabs emerge from holes in the sand, scuttle sideways very quickly, and then return to their holes in the blink of an eye. Because they're basically sand-colored, we thought we were seeing things at first!

We found some crab "dens" where their scuttling tracks were quite evident. One day on the beach, I had a good time with three or four ghost crabs, watching the very tips of the eyes emerge from a hidey-hole, then seeing the crab make a run for it. I'm not sure what they were after, although I did see one latch on to a piece of seaweed and run back into its lair.

On the bay side, we saw fiddler crabs. On the Chincoteague end of Assateague, the Park Service had built a wooden boardwalk out through the salt marshes. The ground was crawling with these little crabs. Fiddler crabs are identified easily by their lopsided claws ... probably the origin of their name, too.

5 comments:

Sand said...

ha, you have crabs! My new header is Mt. Thielsen in Oregon, not too far from Crater Lake! Isn't it awesome?

Gretchen said...

We're at the beach now, so we've seen a few crabs and the family ate many dozen crab legs for dinner tonight. :)

Tom said...

Neat find these crabs, if I'm ever by the sea I make for the rock pools and go searching for stuff like this.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I'm Alisha from Wowzio, and I'm excited to tell you about our new widget platform that helps bloggers increase readership by providing engaging widgets containing your blog's rich content. You can check out widgets customized for your blog here:

Wowzio Widgets for your Blog

I wanted to reach out to you to ask for your feedback on these widgets (feel free to install them on your blog, if you feel they are a good fit). I'm sorry for leaving this message via a comment, it's not at all our intent to spam you ( which is why i'm leaving this comment on an older post and you can always remove this comment ). Again, we would love to hear your feedback.

Thanks,
Alisha Wright
alisha.wright1@gmail.com

Unknown said...

These are cool!