Dog Whelk – forty years ago in my nature notebooks

One of the greatest things you can have as a child is a love of the natural world. To have the capacity to find joy in a ladybird, to love the song of a bird or to appreciate a seed floating gently past on the wind is vital to a healthy outlook on life. Okay, in Orkney you can forget the gentle wind.

Forty years ago I was busy 12 year old keeping nature notebooks of everything I identified and some of the things that I didn’t. Here’s my entry for forty years ago today 11 August 1976:

Dog Whelk - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the)

On Westray’s beaches there are lots of Dog Whelk shells, and yes, they are very thick and some of them are toothed on the inside.

Dog Whelk - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the) - The Hall of Einar

They have beautiful spiral sculpturing.

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