Sharks' teeth by the hundreds

Since we moved to this stretch of coast in March we've been scavenging for fossils every week, every day sometimes! Today we decided to sort through our finds and count them. The one above is a good example, it has both of what we call the wings and hooky bits (yep, very professional terms!) but many of our finds are damaged partials. They still count though! There are 443 partial teeth in the next pic - crazy number!

We separated out 62 of the best teeth, they come in all shapes and sizes. 443 +62=505!!  I don't know how we found some of the tiniest, we just seem to get in the zone some days! You can have a virtual hunt here

Here's my favourite again:

I really need to find a way to display them. I might fix some in a box frame, but what I'd really like to do is make a coffee table with a glass top and a partitioned area beneath, maybe using printer's trays. Hmmm, one day....!

Where did the summer go?

My poor blog - so neglected! But looking back at just a few photos, I can see why - I've been living, not blogging! Lots of walking on the beach and bird-spotting (the little cuties above are turnstones).

We've been to lots of local events, big thanks to Herne Bay Promo Team for giving us such a great summer!

Went to see Coco and the Butterfields, for FREE, twice!

If you haven't heard them, I recommend giving them a listen. They have a bizarre blend of folk and hiphop, and tremendous energy.

I hadn't heard of Marcel Duchamp (sorry, I'm a philistine), but the festival in Herne Bay was great with lots of original work to enjoy. His local collection was that he sent a postcard to someone saying "I'm not dead, I'm in Herne Bay". Hmmm. 

There were decorated bikes all over town, I liked this one because #1 it's knitted, and #2 there are CAKES!

More birdwatching?

We've been enjoying the garden (and the sea view!) too... as was this spectacular moth. Don't know what it is (do you?) but it was beautiful, so fragile, almost like parchment.

Somehow we found time to help our son and new daughter- in-law move house, with the assistance of their kittens. You saw the wedding pics, I hope? My dancing blisters are healed now!

Then there was a torch procession and fireworks...

We sat on the slopes at Tankerton and watched the Waterski World Championship (I think!). No idea who was winning but my goodness they were fast. 

We also watched a lot of sailors enjoying the sea

And of course we're still fossil hunting. Our collection of fossil sharks teeth now has around 150, but we have finally found two fossil fish vertebra after months of searching. 

I found the first, and then MrNifty found the second one the next day.

I found time to knit a ghostbuster! He'll be going to meet his actor friend with Barry next month, so there will be another photo of him in the fan section soon.

We'll be moving (yes, again) in the spring when our current lease expires, so thought we'd have a week in Bognor Regis, to see if we fancied trying living there. By the end of the week we've decided that Bognor itself isn't for us, but the outskirts look promising, maybe Felpham or Aldwick

The clouds were amazing that day, there was almost a straight line.

Big beaches - and yay, we found fossils!! Rotularia bognoriensis to be precise, fossil marine worms (I haven't suddenly become an expert, we saw some later in the museum!)

Bognor even has pretty street lights along the seaside!

We had lunch at the Fox one day, where William Blake was arrested for sedition! We also ate at another local pub, the Thatched House - both made us want to move there NOW.

So that's just a little of what I've been up to during the last couple of months - how was your summer?

Virtual Fossil Hunt!

Many of you know that fossil hunting is pretty much on the daily agenda here, so I thought I'd show how easy it is (not!). The first photo shows where we're going. This is the view from the garden fence, the exposed shingle at low tide is the best place to hunt. It's only a high low tide today, not a low low tide when more shingle is exposed. Before we moved here I didn't even know that the tides varied, other than low and high, but today's low tide is only 1.4m as opposed to 2.5m later in the month.

Here we are! Now it's *just* a case of eyeballing the shingle, best done from an undignified squat! We're looking for black fossil sharks teeth in a bed of black shingle. Easy peasy. When I spotted the first one I took a photo of it as I saw it, before I moved anything, but first I'll show you what you're looking for:

Now it's your turn to look for it! (You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it)

Got it yet? Same view, closer in:

It takes a while to get your eye in, as you can imagine. What usually catches my eye is the extreme sharpness or the straight edge. On the better examples there is a Y shaped root but we didn't find any like that today. If you can find the next one I'll be impressed! Here's what you're looking for:

And here's where I looked:

The fossil is towards the bottom, centre, in the photo above. Look for the round orange pebble

Spot it now?

In the next photo there is "something" pretty much in the centre. I don't know what it is, but it has regular lines that make me think it is a fossil rather than just a stone. I don't know though, do you?

 So these were today's finds. Not a huge crop, but we weren't out long, maybe half an hour.

Here's our total haul (so far), we moved here on March 1st but already had 4 of the 78 (!!) from an earlier hunt

These two are my favourites. The bigger one is - well - big! It shows the Y shape I mentioned earlier, that's the easiest thing to spot. The other one is ridiculously tiny, I don't know how I saw it!

We found the next fossil on our previous beach between Pett Level and Fairlight last year. The area was a river bed, and these are casts of tracks made by crustaceans (I think!)

We've also hunted at Folkestone, it's HORRIBLE underfoot, clambering over slippery boulders, but we persevered. Apparently the hunting is better if you work right at the cliff, but I'm not keen on danger! We found casts of ammonites and bits of ammonites:

 but my goodness we found lots!

On another day at our local beach MrNifty found this excellent piece of fossil wood embedded in a stone. It started to fall apart as soon as it dried, so I soaked it in yarn stiffener! did the job, probably not the obvious solution if you're not a knitter.

Last but not least - remember how paltry my seaglass collection was when last I showed you? 

It's grown!

Bird spotting

On the way to town...

a hawk of some sort, perched on an old weather vane, looking for lunch

we got way closer than I expected, it's a busy footpath along the top of the cliff, lots of undergrowth going down to the beach so plenty of lunch living there I should think.

I'm happy to be corrected, but judging by the vertical streaks on the chest and the chestnut back I'm thinking it's a female kestrel - do let me know if I'm right or wrong!