"Nevermore!" quoth Elizabeth Gould

Looks like a big storm brewing in the south.

I've felt for some time that John Gould, my Gouldian finch, has been rather lonely sharing this 'umble abode with only your almanackist, who is deep in 15-hour days, seven days a week, of research for a novel he's writing, and has barely enough time to scratch, let alone converse.

I never could stand to see a lonely bird, so this morning I brought home a red-faced mate for my black-faced fella. As the great ornithologist John Gould named these magnificent small birds for his wife, Elizabeth, my new bird is so named. Welcome, Elzabeth Gould! So pretty.

She's suffered the ignominy of being brought home in a cardboard cake box with holes, has met her new boyfriend, doesn't seem too impressed, and seems inclined to spend the rest of the darkening day sitting alone like Poe's raven, atop not a pallid bust of Pallas but something of that ilk: a silver polystyrene female dummy head I have next to a male one on top of a tall cupboard. She feels safe there and has a good view of the monster beneath her gaze (your almanackist). I'm not sure yet what confidences about me John shared with her in their brief meeting this morning. I hate to think.

Purple-breasted (because he's a he) Johnny, on his favourite driftwood perch near my bathroom mirror is thinking "Women!" and also "How can I crack on to that babe?" and also "Whoaaa!! Did you get a look at that mauve breast??!!". If I remember correctly from my antediluvian youth, he's in there right now endlessly combing his hair but it won't make a scrap of difference. I'll post a photo of the Goulds when I can get (a) a camera, and (b) the two of them in the same place.

Had a short flaneur and admired the flower of a Banksia integrifolia (pictured). Most of the 75 species of Banksias are commonly called bottlebrushes, for obvious reasons, and I'm a common guy but Banksia will do today. This species is generally called Coast banksia. It likes sandy soils (that, we've got!) anywhere from South Queensland, through new South Wales and into Victoria, and there are three subspecies, which occur in different areas within that range.

Banksias are named for Sir Joseph Banks (1743 - 1820), the British naturalist and botanist on Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768 - 1771). He's credited with the introduction to the West of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa, and the genus named after him, Banksia, all well known species in Australia where his mark was firmly left. He was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales, as is hinted by the name Botany Bay, which was the colloquial term for the whole colony before Australia was named.

Banks was directly responsible for several famous voyages, including that of George Vancouver to the Pacific Northwest of North America, and William Bligh's voyages to transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean Sea islands; the latter brought about the famous mutiny on the Bounty.

Sir Joseph Banks was also adviser to King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a prominent Freemason. He published the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1772 he made a voyage to Iceland with the great Swedish botanist Daniel Solander.

Banks’s library, a five-volume catalogue of which was published in his lifetime, became the core of Britain's Natural History Museum Library. His name dots the map of the South Pacific: Bankstown in Australia, Banks Peninsula on South Island, New Zealand, and Banks Island in modern-day Vanuatu.

It's nice to think about such an amazing human being when I see one of the Coast banksia flowers blooming on a warm, bright Saturday afternoon with a big black storm trying to roll in over Sandy. And it's nice to be high and dry with John and Elizabeth Gould, not being tossed about an Arctic sea on Cook's Endeavour. I might have a sandwich and then a nap; maybe dream up the Great Australian Novel.

Stomach crawlers' six-packs

It's been raining quite heavily, and the molluscs are out, by which I mean the garden snails. I just plucked a small one off the wall by my door and dropped it in the fishpond. Mean of me, I know. Like Nature, I guess I'm "red in tooth and claw".

Funny to think that these guys are related to the cuttlefish, whose skeletons wash up on Sandy Beach and are popular with the owners of budgies and other caged parrots, which sharpen their beaks on them and probably gain a little calcium in their diets. Squids and octopodea are also relatives, and they're said to be the most intelligent of the molluscs. OK, octopuses, but never 'octopi' -- it's a Greek suffix, not Latin; same with 'platypodae', or platypuses, but not 'platypi'. Sorry, just a pet hate I've been needing to vent for a very long time. You know it is.

Another member of the big phylum of Mollusca is the Plough snail, which is a gastropod (that is, of the class Gastropoda).

Literally, 'gastropod' means something like 'stomach foot'. Many years ago, in one of our State parliaments, an honourable member was asked by the Speaker to explain what he had meant by describing another honourable member as a "gastropod", by which the first honourable member explained that he meant "an animal that crawls on its stomach".

At low tide yesterday I marvelled at the artwork of the Plough snails, which have the ten-dollar name of Polynices didymus. Why 'didymus', I don't know -- it means 'the twin', and is a surname commonly given to Thomas the Apostle, he who doubted that Jesus was dead and stuck his hand in his master's wounds for proof. When these gastropods push their way just beneath the surface of the glistening sand, they leave long, magnificent trails, like fingerpainting, or something like the trails on the bark of Scribbly gums. Some of the most beautiful trails are spirals, and some are just all over the place like a drunkard's walk.

What they're doing as slowly and steadily they plough the land and create masterpieces for deadshits to drive on, is hunting for other molluscs, as Plough snails are carnivorous. Remember the pipis we looked at yesterday? Pipis have to keep an eye out for Didymus, who wants to bore a hole in their shell using both an implement (radula) and some acid. Then he will chew his way into a feed of pink shellfish if he gets half a chance.

One day when I have a camera I'll be able to show you the work of these Jackson Pollacks of the sand, but in the meantime we'll have to make do with a photo of Plough snails that I've shamelessly purloined (in Fair Use) from the classic work, Australian Sea Shores (WJ Dakin, Angus and Robertson, 1987), with gratititude, if not actual permission.



What the photo shows next to the snails is four 'collars' (arranged by the photographer), which are commonly found on Sandy Beach. Often the collars form near-circles. The first time I saw one, I thought it was a bit off a plastic carrier from a beer six-pack, and I was pretty pissed off. They really do look like they come off six-packs. What, in fact, it was, was a nest of baby Plough snails. Each 'collar' is in fact thousands of little eggs and as many grains of sand, all glued together with a kind of jelly exuded by Mrs Plough snail.

Quite often on my flaneurs along the strand and through the bush, I see something that I think is a beautifully coloured creature, only to approach gingerly and find that it's a bit of litter left by some stomach-crawling yobbo (here's an example). Sometimes it's the other way round. My life is just full of ironies.

Call him Pipi

It's said to get its name from the Maori, the pipi (Donax deltoides). I think pipi (pronounced "pippy", like my mother used to call me when I was good) is a much better name than Goolwa cockle, as they call it in South Australia. Whatever, deltoides makes sense, given its delta-like shape.

Pipis live in the beach, rather than on it, just below the surface of the sand in the intertidal zone. When the waves retreat you can often see a little hole in the sand, which is the pipi siphoning the water, straining it for a feed.

Fishermen know them well as they are commonly used for bait. I've eaten them in the past (wouldn't do it today) and they taste pretty much like clam, but kinda gritty. Nowhere near as nice as the feed of oysters I got with a screwdriver last week on the river down near Sawtell (forgot my shucking knife ... I said "shucking"!). In my own lifetime I've seen them go from common to not so common, although they aren't scarce or endangered, as far as I know. Still, they have enough trouble avoiding being killed by anglers, Giant beach worms, birds and certain kinds of sea snail, so I don't mind leaving them alone.

Another shellfish, Mactra rufescens, can look very much like the Donax, and with both animals, the shells can often be found up on the upper margins of sandy beaches. However, the pipis are smooth and the Mactras are not, so that's how I can know these are pipis on my desk. Actually, not pipis, but pipi. That's one animal's shell next to the coin, not two, as it's a bivalve. Cute, huh? They come in lots of colours and sizes, too.

Development plans for Sandy Beach

If you would like to read the Sandy Beach-Hearns Lake Action Group (SHAG) submission to Council about the proposed development, click here. It will provide a very good overview of why Sandy Beach is worth saving.

Tempered optimism

I am by nature, on the whole, an optimist, but optimism is not, or should not be, blind. I don't believe that I will grow younger and live forever in perfect health. I don't expect that I will ever win the lottery because I never buy tickets, and I don't assume that I will ever play a musical instrument without first learning how.

I believe that in many, but not all ways my life will continue to improve, and I'm optimistic that I and my family will continue to enjoy predominantly happy lives. I believe that there will be beautiful sunsets in the future. But if you were to ask me if I expect that our species will survive the next two or three centuries, I must admit that I have very strong doubts. My optimism is tempered by my appraisal of the circumstances of human life as it stands at this point in history.

Having said that, and because I don't wish to be a downer, I must say that I believe that it behoves me to act as an optimist, because the alternative is completely without redeeming features. As I walked on the beach in 28-degree heat, I was thinking these things. As I picked up a shell and considered the life of the miraculous creature that was once its resident, I could not help but think of the fact that the US Supreme Court ruled some years ago that genetic material, and life forms, could be privately owned, and that we are in the midst of an almost invisible gene rush of far more consequence than the Gold Rush.

Still reeling from Diamond v. Chakrabarty a full quarter of a century later, I try not to reel too much as I walk the strand. The piece of styrofoam washing up to shore contrasts starkly with the shellfish pushing through the sand a centimetre beneath the surface. I'm never far in my mind from a debate about whether it is more useful for a writer to inspire or alarm, and I have both elements here with the plastic and the mollusc. I don't particularly mind styrofoam beaing patented and owned by a corporation, but the DNA of a sea snail or a cormorant? I can only speak my truth and call the shots as I see them, and I don't believe the good guys are winning.

Still, as I said, the alternative to behaving as if an optimist is too terrible to contemplate, and besides, I'm well and truly out of practice. Will we make it? Probably not. Should we give our all to save something for our descendants? But of course.

Didn't hurt a bit

Back in 1825, when 16-year-old Charles Darwin was studying to enter Cambridge University, before even your almanackist was born, a monsieur named Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest was the first to describe a particular crab, Ocypode cordimana, or the Ghost crab -- a bloke we looked at in a recent post. In fact, Monsieur D described a lot of crabs in a life devoted to science (like that of his old man, the geologist Nicolas Desmarest).

Allow me, too, to describe Ocypode cordimana: Owch! My son Remy is staying with me this week, and I, like most men, am about 100 times more likely to do silly things such as chasing a Ghost crab to catch it and show how harmless it is, when accompanied by a younger person (Remy became a teenager on January 25). There really is something very unbecoming about grown men chasing crabs on beaches alone.

Remy and I have been discussing Darwinian Natural Selection of late, and today's Ocypode was an excellent case in point. Be it known that Ghost crabs have more than one adaptation for fitness in this environment and thus for survival as a species. For one, they have a canniness that exceeds that of the average almanackist.

Rem and I had been exploring this beach and the one south, all the while observing a great many wondrous things, including holes and mullock heaps left by historical gold miners, and holes and mullock heaps left by contemporary Ghost crabs.

One of the best Ocypodal adaptations for survival is its ability to spend most of the day and night underground, mostly above the intertidal zone, near the edge of the beach and the vegetation. There in their burrows, the entrances of which might be as big as something you could stop with a tennis ball, or more often a golf ball, they sit the time out in between their diurnal and nocturnal carnivorous and cannibalistic forays. They are known to eat a wide variety of dead critters (four-wheel drive vehicle drivers not included, more's the pity).

I can't tell you what they do down there, because I've never dug one up (perhaps M. Desmarest did). But I can say with some certainty that such a subterranean existence is one helluvan adaptation for survival, especially when combined with a set of six extremely fast legs (not counting two effective nippers). On the rare occasions that you get close enough to see a Ghostie running for cover, you'll be amazed at his speed. Any bird that hopes for a feed of crab has his work cut out for him, cause these guys can really sprint.

Which brings me back to today's Ghostie, the one I had intended to serve as a parental example of bravery over timidity when it comes to encountering things that creep, crawl, slither, fly and sprint over the surface of our planet. Their planet.

It was Rem with his good eyes who spotted him first, a glorious specimen about the size of a matchbox. The Ghost crabs are named for their translucent bodies, and they are well camouflaged against the sand. Darwinian Survival Adaptation Number Four.

Monsieur crab spotted us too, and made a dash for his hole ... maybe for any hole. A month or so ago I saw two much smaller specimens, probably in courtship, scatter when they felt my footsteps approach, and they took shelter under separate pebbles. As I got closer, they left their temporary hideouts at breakneck speed, both of them diving down the same hole. I wonder to this day if it was their place or a startled neighbour's. Anyway, today's crab was fast but he couldn't outrun me, and probably knew it, so he stopped running all over the place on the sand, and headed for a place he knew he would have the advantage over a big landlubber like me (or a bird). He made a dash for the Pacific Ocean. Survival Adaptation Number Five.

And Number Six: there in the shallows, he burrowed into the sand for a few centimetres as we followed in what the classics call 'hot pursuit'.

While Remy kept his eye on where Monsieur Ocypode had self-interred, I stepped back from the incoming tide to empty both my hands of a whole bunch of plastic junk I'd picked up on our long walk to Emerald Beach. Then, with the bravery and certainty born of long experience at catching ferocious Australian carnivores, I dug with my bare hands (yes, unprotected!) into the sand beneath the water and proudly brought up the frightening beast. Steve Irwin eat your affected accent out!

Quick as lightning, well before I could get out, to filial admiration, the proud words, "See, son, they can't hurt you", this one gave me a nip that drew immediate blood. Darwinian Survival Adaptation Number Seven. These adaptations help to explain why this species of crab can be found in places as diverse as the Red Sea, Somalia, Madagascar, and South Africa as well as Japan, Tahiti ... and Sandy Beach. Possibly an ability to catch planes is another.

I'm still working out what it is, but I'm sure there must be a lesson in all this apart from something about the mechanisms of evolution and "Fathers are big kids still growing up".

Adidas, amigos

I have the offer of a free ride to Sydney tomorrow, so I'm going to grab the opportunity to go and see family and friends for a few days, between Tuesday, April 5 and Sunday, April 10. I haven't taken time off for more years than I care to admit, so I won't be online for the duration. See you when I get back.

A little night music

For a couple of months now, on just a few occasions, I've heard the unmistakeable squeal of a plover flying overhead, round about 1 or 2 in the morning. I have previously seen plovers nesting on the grassy park behind the beach, as one commonly does in this state at least, and am well familiar with the noise they make if you dare to walk anywhere within about 30 metres of their eggs, which they lay in clutches right there on the ground. Plovers are guard dogs with wings.

Naturally, I've gone looking for the plovers, but, although March and April is a good time to find them in their Rottweiler mode, there's none nesting close by as far as I can tell. Which makes the plover noises late at night a little mysterious. I don't know much about them ... except to say that I'm sure they're not Wilson's plovers, unless they're migrating way off course from the Americas.

Not so mysterious is the "galumph!" and "thump" of a big ol' possum on my tin roof. This, too, always seems to happen in the early hours of the morning when I'm pretty busy at my desk, or else reading in bed, and consequently I've only seen him or her for a brief moment on two occasions. Possums are common in many, if not most, bushy parts of Australia, even around the cities, and people often have them visiting every evening for a slice of apple or banana. So many readers will wonder that I haven't seen my visitor, considering we are both nocturnal creatures, but that's how it goes. But I feel I know this possum well, because of the regularity of its crash landing above my head, followed by a few leaps and noisy bounds across the corrugated iron while I tap at the keyboard with my two index fingers. The first time I heard it, I thought it was the vengeful spirit of some poor murdered Sandy Beach soul, and I nearly had a heart attack at that time of the night, but that's another story and I won't go into it for sheer embarrassment.

By now the keen reader will have noted that the picture above seems to be neither avian nor marsupial, so I should explain.

Like any relatively red-blooded Aussie male living a hermit's life in a boondocks cell, from time to time (OK, most of the time) I daydream (OK, and nightdream) about nocturnal visitors, but they don't look like the one I had last night, pictured above.

The ten-buck name for this Ghost crab is Ocypode cordimana, and despite the pestilence of vehicular traffic on Australian beaches, a few of them remain to show off their Latin moniker and the beautiful translucence that gives them their common-as-muck Anglo-Saxon one.

Unlike plovers and possums, these crabs aren't noisy, athough other species of Ocypode can play their own arms like a violin, which is a nice trick if you can do it and very economical. This particular little fella, however, only came to my attention at about 10 last night when I heard a scratching coming from the vertical blinds (bane of my life ... I bet you hate them too if you've had them) on the glass sliding door that is the front entrance of the cabin, about one pace from Esmeralda the Computer.

It sounded for all the world like a large Christmas beetle, but seeing Easter's been and gone and we're heading for Hocktide, this made no sense, so I went to investigate. At first, shaded as he was behind the blind, I was certain he was a she, a Garden orb-weaving spider, which made more sense, as, unlike its cousin St Andrew, the orb-waver is not a species known for keeping the ecclesiastical calendar. Besides, there are a few orbies close to my home. Oncloser inspection, of course, the 'spider' was a crab, but I admit to approaching gingerly.

He's cute, ain't he? But not happy, despite having the honour of being the first crab actually to get inside this pad, which is hermetically (one might say, eremitically), against possible egress by John Gould the Gouldian finch, he was not the slightest bit appreciative of being photographed or held. He really looked at me sideways, then ran away in like fashion.

Crabs have been on my mind a lot lately. No wisecracks please. But this day's post in A Sandy Beach Almanac is already long enough, so we'll have to get back to that later. Besides, it's warm and sunny outside -- what the hell am I doing inside??