Worms main attraction on trip to seaside
I PRESUME you have all spent some time on the beach over summer but, you know, it is still there in winter too.
I recently went muddipping with the Wildlife Trust’s marine officers Kate and Emily and about 40 parents and children. We wandered out onto the sands at St Anne’s and found loads of wildlife and had a lot of splashing fun despite the weather being a bit overcast.
What I love to see is children becoming fascinated with the wildlife that lives in and around the Irish Sea and having a really good time. We found a live shell that amazed everyone by burrowing into the sand – most people just find opened shells that have been discarded by hungry birds.
There were lots of different shells, with the most obvious being the razor shell – you will all have seen these long, narrow, rectangular clam shells. When they are alive they are buried upright in soft sand feeding on plankton.
Many are washed up on the shore, supplying food for hungry wading birds and gulls. After a storm it’s like a banquet with ‘wrecks’ of these shells appearing on the beach.
All interesting stuff, but do you know what fascinated the children most? Worms. Yes the lugworms, loved by sea fishermen, were causing a commotion as the children found them in pools and then dug up sand to find even more.
Lugworms are great for our seaside educators. Just dig a spade into the sand and you are certain to find at least two or three tracks and possibly a worm there too.
The body is a bit like an earthworm with rings around its red body. It has a black head and a yellow tail. If you look really closely, with a microscope, you will see bristles and pairs of feathered gills.
Do you really want to look closely at a worm?
You can see lugworm activity on the surface of the sand as they burrow they leave a trail of spaghetti sand and then, nearby there is a small depression in the beach. So the lugworm digs into sand creating a U-shaped tunnel and then its head sits just below that hollow in the sand.
A lugworm will not leave its burrow unless it needs to create a new one. They can stay in the same place for two weeks, just shifting slightly. Of course they will move when an oystercatcher’s long red bill pierces the sand to lift them out.
During our muddipping experience we were close to birds like oystercatchers, common sandpipers and the usual herring and black-headed gulls. They were waiting for us to move on so they could eat up any worms we had dug up.
Friends often say to me that digging up worms to show to kids on a beach is not really a job but there is a serious side to all this fun. The Lancashire Wildlife Trust does not have the resources to go out and survey the wonderful Irish Sea for wildlife. We have to rely on the goodwill of local diving clubs to pass on information and video.
But one surefire way of finding out what is going on in the ocean is to look along its shoreline to see what is washed up.
So wrap up well and pop down to the beach over the coming months, take in some bracing sea air and try and find some wild offerings – then tell us about them.
To become a member of the trust go to the website at www. lancswt.org.uk or call 01772 324129. For more information about Cheshire Wildlife Trust call 01948 820728 or go to cheshirewildlifetrust. org.uk.