Week 24

Here is my page for week 24.  Last week after the high tide I went searching for objects left behind.  It was a dull grey day with a stormy sky.   I stumbled across a huge jellyfish,  the biggest one I have ever seen here.  I prodded it with my foot and as I lifted the thick jelly body I could see all the long coiled tentacles.   The centre of this circular body was orange and brown umber,  I wished I had taken the camera.  I later read that a jellyfish can still sting when out of the water and dying,  a lesson to be learnt,  never touch them.   The seaweed was glowing,  shades of orange on this grey day.  It was so strange to see so much orangey brown seaweeds,  different shapes but all orange. And then several lengths of bright orange rope and pieces of orange tangled fish net.   It was a colour theme I could not ignore and then the crabs and even some plants with pale orangey leaves.   I have noticed that  the seaweed can appear all the same shades  on a certain day, rather like the seasons it seems to bring a certain colour group. 
Although I am not really a fan of the colour orange I could not resist my orange collection and even a feather to match.   I  found a lovely black and rusty orange oak leaf to add to my bag of treasures and enjoyed using these bright colours on a rainy day.  I used yellow and red for the orange,  sepia and white.  It is painted with acrylic inks and then I decided to just stipple a little with a sepia ink pen.
I had a lovely walk on the shore yesterday,and crossed over the tidal river to walk along  the other side of the bank.  We saw a  pair of Oyster catchers who  flew around very excited making loud noises  and did not want us there.  I wanted to go to where all the ducks congregate, the large flock which we have been watching over the weeks.   They  all got up and flew as we approached,  the ground was scattered with hundreds of feathers,  guess what I was doing while my husband sat and watched other birds.   I also found lots of Curlew feathers, the brown and white striped ones, different sizes and shapes.   Just along the shore we saw a pair fly up from the ground.  I found it hard to believe these two large birds would nest here but the expert insisted they do.   It was just by luck that we decided to go across the grass and find a broken egg shell, a hatched curlew egg.  There isn't much of it,  the pointed end  and enough to estimate and indicate the size of this large egg.  
The reason we went this way was because we saw a duck, a beautiful brown speckled duck with an unusual beak sitting in the long grass.  It pretended it had not seen us,  it kept very still and was so well camouflaged, sitting on a nest.  We quietly altered our path,  as luck had it to find the  Curlew egg shell.  We now know it was a Eider duck,  we read "she is a devoted mother seldom leaving  her eggs and sometimes going without food  for  three to four weeks", quote from  The Observers' Book of Birds.   It was a beautiful sight, and one that has in the past provided us with "eider down", her nesting feathers .....to stuff our quilts... Eiderdowns.  A piece of social history too for you.
Hope you enjoy my week  24.  Thank you for your comments and welcome to my new followers.
Millyx