Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The beach in winter

I took a walk to the beach today and had it practically to myself in the rather cold wind.  Undeterred I went down on the sand to get close to the sea and found these peculiar jellies, all along the waterline.  They're in different sizes from about 3 to 9 cms across with lovely reddish centres.  In the small ones I could see 4 quarter sections but the larger ones looked rather like those clear glass paperweights with patterns in the base.  I picked one up and looked at the underside and it was almost as smooth as the top.  I wished I had put my sketchbook in my pocket as I had to draw these from memory.  Does anyone know what they are?  I'm fascinated as I've never seen such creatures before!

5 comments:

  1. What??? You went for a walk without your sketchbook??? You did a great job from memory though. I wonder if those jelly things could be some sort of aquatic creature's egg case?

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  2. Possibly some kind of jelly fish? The four reddish circles tickle my ancient memory. I used to spend summers on the East Coast.

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  3. Lovely drawing! There's a group on Flickr called "ID Me" - someone there might be able to tell you what species it is if you post the photos from the other entry (and give a location and size).

    http://www.flickr.com/groups/id-me/

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