Imagine squeezing your stomach out through your mouth and into a takeaway box. Imagine then, your stomach digesting the food before you slide your stomach back into your own body...that is what a sea star (star fish) does at meal times. It is like something out of a science fiction film!

     Walking along the beach yesterday morning, I found this little fellow turned upside down on the beach, its tubular feet (which are filled with water) waved wildly up at me. It was struggling  to save himself from the seagulls that hunt the shoreline.

      These animals, yes, they are indeed animals and not fish (they don’t have gills, scales or fins!) come in all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes. However, unlike us, they run entirely on water! There isn’t a drop of blood in their bodies. But at the tip of each arm, you will find a wee little eye. It cannot see much but it can sense light and dark.

       Their family tree consists of around 2,000 species of sea stars plus the sand dollars, the sea urchins, the sea cucumber and the sun star. This means that their body plan has five sections (or multiples thereof) arranged around a central disk.  However, the sun star has up to forty arms.

       When we are threatened or frightened, we will often run but the sea star will drop an arm or two, knowing that within a year, it will grow another. How amazing is nature?

       And so, back on the beach with my kind and unassuming husband, we scooped the tiny sea star up and slipped him back into the water. We smiled as he hurried off on another adventure in the big blue sea.

Colonel Cinnabar (Tyria jacobaeae) lives by the sea on a bright yellow plant called ragwort. Every day he looks at himself in the mirror to see if his black wings with red patches, are up to scratch. 'I can see how they mistake me for a butterfly,' he chuckled. You see, Colonel Cinnabar is not a butterfly at all, but a detective moth and he guards the larvae and young caterpillars that depended on the ragwort for its food.  These little creatures are poisonous so are seldom eaten by predators but there is one monster that Colonel Cinnabar guards them from and that is the Cuckoo!

      With relatives all across Europe and western and central Asia plus a few in New Zealand, Colonel Cinnabar is never short of letters to read and he spends the summer replying to them. Quite often, he will do this whilst on duty.

      One day when Colonel Cinnabar was writing a letter to his uncle in Europe, he didn’t appear to notice that he was being watched. Now this was rather strange, because it is usually the detective that does the watching. However, in this case it was the dreaded Cuckoo! He had his beady eyes on the hairy and poisonous caterpillars. ‘This will be easy,’ said the Cuckoo, ‘some detective he is!’  But Colonel Cinnabar wasn’t daft. He knew that the Cuckoo was watching him and had prepared a trap.

       Just as the cuckoo was about to steal a young caterpillar, the Colonel gave the signal and the Tyria jacobaeae’s Army flew down and pushed the Cuckoo off course. The Cuckoo was dumbstruck!

       ‘Take that as a warning,’ said the Colonel. ‘And as punishment for trying to steal young caterpillars, you will take my letter to my uncle, on your way back to Africa!’

       The Cuckoo nodded his head gratefully, so happy that he had a head left to nod with!

I was sitting beneath a horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum ) with a friend just the other day, drinking a cup of sweet tea. The late summer sun still warmed us and above the tree, a red kite teased me. But despite my determination to capture him on camera, my fascination was drawn also to the tree.

       ‘I remember when I was a child,’ I said to my friend, ‘the great excitement I had in climbing for conkers.’ I sipped my tea them continued. ‘I would scrape my knees and tear my clothes, but nothing would stop me once I had started.’ My dear friend just listened, or pretended to anyway.

      ‘And let me tell you, that these trees can grow up to 36metres (118 feet) tall. However, I don’t think I ever climbed to the top. Someone would always panic and run for my father.’

      ‘Did he ever catch you up the tree?’ my friend asked. I nodded, so she was listening.

      ‘Once or twice,’ I replied, remembering again the frantic look on his face. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never seem to remember what I could and couldn’t do. So I did it anyway. You see, I really loved those big old huggable trees with branches thick enough to lie on, swing from, sit on and sleep on. I would have lived in one, given half a chance!

       ‘Is it poisonous?’ my friend asked.

       ‘Not to touch,’ I replied, ‘but the young nuts are and they certainly shouldn’t be eaten by yourself or horses!’

        I gazed up at the tree and told my friend about Anne Frank.  I told her that on 23^rd February 1944, she wrote about the chestnut tree in her diary.

Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.

        ‘I’ve read the book many times,’ I said sadly, ‘the tree survived until 2010 when it fell down in the wind. Some of the saplings were taken to America where they continue to grow in memory of Anne.’

         ‘And did you know that during the First World War, there was a campaign for people to collect and donate conkers for the government. They were using them for a source of starch for some method to produce acetone. This was to help produce cordite, which was then used in military armaments. They chose conkers, to save using food as it was scarce enough as it was.’

        My dear friend nodded and I could see that I had probably exhausted her so we sat quietly and sipped our sweet tea. The red kite still hovered above me so I took that long awaited photo.

Miss Peri Winkle (Littorina littorea) is one of the slowest moving snails in the world. ‘Why hurry? Don’t worry, is her motto.

      So she travels at about 1 -2 metres per hour. But if she is pushed for time, as young lady’s often are, then she can up her speed to about five metres an hour.

      When she gets too hot, Miss Peri Winkle will roll down the slope and plop into the water! But if she accidentally lands upside-down on the rocks or the sand, she could be in BIG trouble! Laying on her back, Miss Peri Winkle won’t be able to eat and could possibly die, unless of course, the sea comes in and turns her up the right way! But if Miss Winkle dies (God forbid!) her leftover shell will soon be on the market as a home for a hermit crab. Shameful!

      Her daily diet consists of seaweed and algae, which she finds disgusting but was taught by her mother to eat what’s put in front of her or go without.

      'You will live for ten years if you look after yourself,' her mother would say.

      So with starvation as her only option, Miss Peri Winkle reluctantly eats her food. Although at times, she has threatened to go and live at the home for waifs and strays.

       These so called pebbles of the sea, cope with dehydration quite well! In fact, they can survive for many weeks without being in the water. They withdraw into their shells and close the operculum (hornlike lid) that’s just above their foot. A mucus is then secreted that hardens in the air and the shell sticks to the rocks.

        So if you see Miss Peri Winkle down on the beach, lying on her back, please turn her over or put her in a pool....she isn’t sunbathing, she’s dying!

     .

Walking in the woods earlier today I was surprised at the amount of nuts there were on the Hazel trees (corylus). This brought back the happiest memory I have of my grandfather.

      I was six at the time and it was just before he died, but thankfully we had this special time together. We had walked down through the valley where we lived, following the river as we went. My grandfather was a quiet man and I distinctly remember that I did most of the talking. I remember him wearing baggy trousers which were held up by a pair of braces which one hand clung to and the other was wrapped gently around my own. His shirt was white and collarless and on his head he wore a flat cloth cap. He never went anywhere without his flat cap.

       ‘That is a magical tree,’ he said and pointed upwards to where I spotted bunches of green nuts. I loved nuts but had no idea (at that time) that they grew on trees.

        ‘Can we pick some?’ I asked excitedly. And so my grandfather removed his flat cap and we filled it with hazelnuts and with a couple of stones, my grandfather cracked a few for me to taste. Although they were green, they were the best nuts I have ever had.

        ‘We must leave some for the wood pigeons, jays, tits and the woodpeckers,’ said my grandfather and although slightly disappointed (or a tad greedy) I nodded my head in agreement.

        On the walk back home, I asked my grandfather why it was a magic tree.

        ‘For many reasons,’ he said, ‘but I think it’s because you can bend the branches in a knot in spring, and you can’t do that with many trees!’ Then he pulled out a couple of nuts from his deep pocket and said, ‘my father, your great grandfather once told me that he carried a few hazelnuts in his pocket to ward off the rheumatism. Now I am old too so I do the same thing!’

       Although I am not yet that old, I picked some nuts from a hazel tree today, and did the same thing.