Saturday Critters - Atlantic Ghost Crab
If you spend a few hours on a secluded Atlantic coast beach, you might run into several Ghost Crabs.
Atlantic Ghost Crabs are terrestrial but must return to the water to wet their gills. We have seen small parades of them at the beach in Strathmere, NJ. We wonder if there is safety in numbers. They make burrows in the sand above the strandline. According to Wikipedia, the burrows can be up to 4 feet deep.
Their compound eyes are on stalks and can swivel 360 degrees. They feed on other small animals, clams, insects, and even turtle eggs.
They are very shy and can run faster than you can! I've never seen anyone capture one. Thank you to Viewing Nature with Eileen for hosting Saturday Critters.
Great captures of the Ghost Crabs! I have seen them on the beaches in Maryland and Virginia.
ReplyDeleteThank you for linking up and sharing your post. Take care, have a great weekend.
Thank you for the challenge and the comment.
DeleteThese are great photos of the crabs. We don't really see a lot of crabs over here in Scotland. That are great looking creatures I think :-D
ReplyDeleteThey are very entertaining to watch on the beach.
DeleteInteresting post.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteCool critters!
ReplyDeleteThanks we enjoy spotting them when we sit on the beach.
DeleteThere are so many interesting things on the beach. I walk slow....so I see a lot!
ReplyDeleteMy happiest times are walking on the beach, searching for treasures...shells, sea glass, driftwood.
DeleteHow interesting, and great photos.
ReplyDeleteIt's fun and interesting to watch them. They are very lively...and smart.
Delete"Ghost Crabs" by Ted Hughes
ReplyDeleteAt nightfall, as the sea darkens,
A depth darkness thickens, mustering from the gulfs and the submarine badlands,
To the seas edge. To begin with
It looks like rocks uncovering, mangling their pallor.
Gradually the laboring of the tide
Falls back from its productions,
Its power slips back from glistening nacelles, and they are crabs.
Giant crabs, under flat skulls, staring inland
Like a packed trench of helmets.
Ghosts, they are ghost-crabs.
They emerge
An invisible disgorging of the seas cold
Over the man who strolls along the sands.
They spill inland, into the smoking purple
Of our woods and towns--a bristling surge
Of tall and staggering specters
Gliding like shocks through water.
Our walls, our bodies, are no problem to them.
Their hungers are homing elsewhere.
We cannot see them or turn our minds from them.
Their bubbling mouths, their eyes
In a slow mineral fury
Press through our nothingness where we sprawl on beds,
Or sit in rooms. Our dreams are ruffled maybe.
Or we jerk awake to the world of possessions
With a gasp, in sweat burst, brains jamming blind
Into the bulb-light. Sometimes, for minutes, a sliding
Staring
Thickness of silence
Presses between us. These crabs own this world.
All night, around us or through us,
They stalk each other, they fasten onto each other,
They mount each other, they tear each other to pieces,
They utterly exhaust each other.
They are the powers of this world.
We are their bacteria,
Dying their lives and living their deaths.
At dawn, they sidle back under the seas edge.
They are the moil of history, the convulsion
In the roots of blood, in the cycles of concurrence.
To them, our cluttered countries are empty battleground.
All day they recuperate under the sea.
Their singing is like a thin seawind flexing in the rocks of a headland,
Where only crabs listen.
They are Gods only toys.
Great poem. Thanks for commenting and visiting my blog.
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