They Fiddle While We (Sun)Burn

I love the ocean, and its inhabitants, more than is probably good for me—or for those around me, who often have to suffer through my disquisitions on the subjects. But last weekend, at least, it was just as well that I had such an excessive fondness for all things marine.

Last Saturday, when Annie and I were on Cape Cod, we took a long (3-miles each way) walk on a trail that led through salt-marshes, alongside sand dunes, and finally to a beach on Cape Cod Bay. This would have been lovely (and in many ways still was) if it hadn’t meant that we had to walk most of six miles on shifting sand in the full heat of the sun—on one of those miraculous Cape-Cod summer days where there’s not a cloud in the sky. (Did I mention that I didn’t have a hat?)

This could have been a Very Bad Vacation Experience, in spite of the beauty of the dunes and water and the gorgeous liquid music of the song sparrows—if it wasn’t for my inordinate enthusiasm for marine life.

[a very cool non-marine sighting:
look at how this grashopper (locust?)
blends in perfectly with the sand]

Because, you see, as we trudged through the buggy, exposed marsh, we saw the most amazing thing. –At first, as we began our walk, I noticed only a shadowy scurrying in the seagrass litter by our feet. I followed the motion and discovered a small crab (less than an inch long), which quickly disappeared into a burrow in the damp sand.

We soon discovered that the marshes were full of fiddler crabs (Uca pugnax), all scuttling among their burrows or wading into puddles of brackish water or waving their claws with great pomp.

[Notice how huge its left claw is compared
to its eentsy-weentsy right-hand one;
do fiddler crabs have Pincer Envy?]

This was thrilling for me, since I’ve seen the openings of their burrows many times—little holes in damp sand, surrounded by small balls of sand made by their excavations—but had never before seen the actual crabs, much less such a swarm of them. (This is their breeding season, and, as this excellent article on their ecology and behavior describes, the males gather in leks—big groups of show-offs—to compete for mates and see whose large claw is the biggest.)

Annie thought they were pretty cool, too. So, thanks to the distraction of a novel marsh-side sighting, we were able to enjoy what the walk did offer us and—mostly—dismiss what it didn’t (like restrooms or more than ten minutes of shade).

Thus I illustrate the value of an obsession with the sea.

P.S. If you want to know more about fiddler crabs—based on my reading, not much personal experience—please ask me in the comments, and I’ll tell you.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}