It's a nice and colorful day today, cold but sunny ... quiet but exciting ... with traces of approaching springtime in the air ... and I went walking with no clear destination in mind ...
... wandering around my hometown ... but very soon my Wednesday walk got more focused ...
... and I found myself in the bay near the port ...
... busy shooting birds ...
... boats ...
... and interesting stuff uncovered by the low tide. Here you can see a dozen of Hexaplex trunculus snails, one of the sea snail species used by ancient Mediterranean cultures to produce colors for coloring clothes. The hypobranchial gland of this species secretes a mucus used to create a distinctive purple-blue indigo dye. These snails are scavengers and predators, and they often attack or feed on carcasses in groups ... so it's no wonder that a bunch of them got stranded together ... the orange colored thing near the snails ...
... it's a pretty big hermit crab with sea anemone attached to the shell that he uses as a mobile home.
Here you can take a relatively better look at the Hexaplex trunculus ...
... only relatively because with the layer of mud and algae that covers the shell, the snail is always well camouflaged in this environment, in or out of the water.
While I was sniffing around the mud ... photographing muddy stuff ...
... the elegant Larus ridibundus gulls were floating quietly a bit further, in the slightly deeper water ...
... this species breeds mostly near lake and rivers in the inland, but some colonies are permanently here on the coast, and others spend the winter on the Adriatic, like some wise people from colder parts of Europe :D that have bought apartments here in Medulin.
On this enlargeable photograph you can see the same seagull ... and one of the local grocery stores, blurred in the background.
This is another, even wider view on this area ... and with the following shot ...
... I'm bringing the focus back on the details.
This is one of the many, temporarily stranded oysters.
Sea cucumbers also get stranded in big numbers ...
... here you can see a black one ... with an empty shell of the elongated Cerithium vulgatum snail ...
... here is another one ... and, when I think about it better, these shells are probably not empty but used by small hermit crabs.
Here is another, differently colored sea cucumber ... and with the following shot ...
... the focus is slowly shifting ...
... towards wider scenery.
Here is a composition with some interesting green and brown areas, and a straight borderline between them.
Among other stuff on this photograph filled with various stuff, you can barely see some birds ... on the following shot ...
... you can see them better. The Little egret (Egretta garzetta) and the young Yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) ... theis juvenile seagull has found something edible in the mud.
And now ... back in the wider view ...
... it's time to admire the muddy bay in its enirety ... :D ... again ...
There is a restourant nearby ... across the small road, just outside the frame, so you can't see it on this shot ... but you can see the fallen advert board laying in the grass.
Today's low tide was exceptionally low ... and uncovered parts of the bay rarely seen out of the water ...
... so the Eurasian coot (Fulica atra) on these photographs ...
... had to walk across the area in which these birds usually swim.
The large, leaf - like fingers are a great help in these muddy situations.
Not far from the Coot ... at the edge of the water ...
... the extremely low tide uncovered this lovely skeleton of a small wooden boat ... trapped in the mud since who knows when.
The mud is a rich habitat filled with many small animals and covered with algae, so the Coot was feeding along the way.
Here is another juvenile seagull ... and now ...
... with this boat in the unexpectedly shallow water ...
... and some generic landscape shots ...
... is time to end this walk.
As always in these walks on HIVE, the freshly taken photographs are my work - THE END.