Our plan of attack today was to hit Sand Crocus at it's second British site. Dawlish Warren is just too passé, lol. We headed off and soon realised we had good gen from the carpark - we just weren't sure which carpark we should start from! Dan phoned a botanist contact, we re-orientated ourselves and set off to the correct carpark and finally we were off! Dan's two year old daughter kept us amused as she roly-polyed her way down the steep slope in only a slightly controlled fashion, evil buggers that we are :) Eventually she wore herself out and we headed for the area in question. Pretty soon after entering The Zone, Dan called out and waved me over - he'd found the spot!  Within moments I was gawping at my first sight of SAND CROCUS Romulea columnae, much smaller and even more exquisite than I'd expected. We took a few pics and a quick head-count revealed 47 plants in flower. There may well have been more, but the leaves are so grass-like that I doubt I'd have noticed them amongst the turf. Very happy, we headed back to St Blazey before heading down to Par Beach in search of sand-dwelling creatures. 

Dan had a couple of large sieves and buckets and  'A Plan'...this should be good! We hit the beach at low tide and started digging, emptying, seiving and searching. Not massively productive and no sign of the hoped for Masked Crab despite seeing empty shells of them all over the place. We took a few worms and isopods back home to identify. My only vertebrate lifer of the day was SAND GOBY Pomatoschistus minutus of which I saw several in the shallow water over the extensive sandflats. They have an incredible way of hiding from view - swim very low and very fast and hit the side of a sandbank full speed and simply...disappear!! There's even a small puff of sand as they hit, just amazing. :)

Back in Dan's office we hit the ID books and started with our haul from the sandflats. Many worms defied ID but we did manage GREENLEAF WORM Eulalia viridis, the bivalve THIN TELLIN Tellina tenuis, the crustaceans Idotea marina and Idotea baltica, Urothoe marina and the bizarre looking SAND-MASON WORM Lanice conchilega. Sphaeroma serratella was also sieved but not a lifer for either of us.