Tuesday 15 May 2012

Snails seemed to be everywhere.

(Diary page censored in part) ...
0800-1000hrs. Busy day today, just got time to have a quick look around Plain Quarry at Dalton. The Fairy Foxglove is showing well now (see photo below). I could actually hear the Cuckoo right down here, so guessed he may have been close to the Dalton Crag (lower boundary). Also lots of plants now showing: eg Garlic Mustard, Purple Vetch, Ladies Mantle, Ribwort Plaintain, Silverweed, Large Cowslip colony, Small Trefoil, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Hawkweed etc etc.
But the striking thing this morning was the amount of snails about, there where certainly hundreds. It was difficult walking, like playing hopscotch, but more gentile! I checked and they seemed to be of two of the commoner species eg: The larger snail (the one in the photo immediately below was the "Common Garden Snail" (Helix aspersa) and the other two were probably of the same species known as "The White Lipped Snail" (Cepaca hortensis) these are shown in the 2nd (Yellow colour) and 3rd (the banded) photos below.