At first look, everything here looks muddy brown ...
... and fairly unattractive ...
... but if you look better ...
... and especially if you look very up close and give yourself time to search and discover little details ...
... you will find colorful details ...
... and pretty amazing little things ...
... in this temporary landscape...
... here only until the sea returns ...
This is a small muddy lagoon between long stretches of rocks.
I was passing here early this morning, directed to the coastal meadows nearby. I was going to take some pictures of insects, flowers and such things at down, but when I saw a low tide and all that terrain now ready to photograph without the need of a waterproof camera, it caught my attention.
So I went to the mud ... to see what's happening there ...
... and I noticed that sometimes is hard to tell what is a sea and what a land animal, here on this borderland
These little snails looked almost exactly like some of the snails I saw in the woods far from the coast ...
... but their shell was rock solid, like those shells the sea snail have ...
These little amphipods are definitely sea animals ...
... and they are very fast, they running so fast that looks like they are gliding above the humid rocks, and also very good camouflaged on this terrain, so is hard to get a good shot. On this photo, one is standing near one of the little canyons between layers of rocks in which they go to hide.
Maybe in this photograph, you can see it a little bit better.
And then, on the same terrain, you find this, similar looking, land arthropod ... and it's easy to get a bit confused ...
... or this, very very, small one ...
... land or sea?
The plants with succulent leaves give the place a nice touch of very pretty and delicate colors
I like these little gardens, sometimes in shallow water, very much
... as Master Yoda once said " Very cool shapes these plants have, mmmm '' ...
... '' on some distant planet, long ago I visited have, they remind me, mmmm'' ...
... yes, this is definitely a cool little flora ...
On one humid rock, I saw ...
... this mosquito-like fly ...
... they are often here, near the sea ...
... hanging on the rocks ...
Further to the sea, the landscape looked more like a little dessert, made of muddy dunes ...
... and filled with different holes ...
... of various size and shapes ...
... made by many sea worms, arthropods, and mollusks ...
... that live in the deeper in the mud ...
On the surface, I found the remains of the one of the strangest of them
This shrimp is digging long tunnels in the mud, I used to dig him up sometimes accidentally when looking for delicious shellfish to eat for a lunch.
Nearby was this lovely little structure, a small sea urchin remains
And then... this ...
... thing ...
... looked like a messy amalgam of some algae ...
... but then ...
... looking in it longer ... I saw some eyes there ...
... and when I turned it over ... strange anatomy was revealed ... :D
... with a pair of tongs ...
... it was a crab ...
... an extremely well-camouflaged crab ...
When camouflage is this good ... it's difficult to make a good photograph of the animal and make it look like a proper living thing
So I was trying very hard to make an ultimate portrait of this strange little crab, one shot that will show it clear and good... AND I GAVE UP :D ... and made a video ... because when it moves :) looks much more real, visible, and alive ...so here is the Dtube video of it ...
... low tide in a small muddy lagoon between the rocks ... strange little crab camouflaged with algae and mud ...
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
And now ...
... with limpets ...
... and sea snails ...
... waiting for the high tide ...
... it's time to end this episode ...
... hope you liked this muddy post ... have a good day ... or night ... wherever on the planet you are ...
( As always in this posts on Steemit ... all the photographs ... and the videos ... are my work )