Dense vegetation alive with birdsong clings to the face of Humphrey Head. Gazing up at the gaping mouth of Edgar’s Arch, a blowhole in Cumbria’s highest limestone headland – and above a bushy beard of trees, shrubs and creepers – I forget to watch my feet. Result? I become stuck in one of the glutinous exiting channels that booby-trap Morecambe Bay’s shores.
Good Samaritans hoist me to my feet, “We’re on a weekend activity hen do,” says the one in the “Game Over” T-shirt. “Glad the tide’s out,” says the group’s instructor, her top labelled “Boss”. “Folk get mired down like mice in those traps with sticky floors. Then the tide sneaks in.”
The hens move on to a sea-cliff traverse, follow my leader-style across vertical carboniferous limestone. They’re never more than a metre up from the deck, clinging on by their eyelashes, it seems, yet always moving safely sideways. “Like crabs,” the bride-to-be says, laughing.
“Ugh!” goes one. “Bugs! Like silverfish.”
“Springtails,” says the instructor, stepping back down onto terra firma – as do all her charges. “They’re harmless. Look!” She produces a microscope magnifier lens, which she clips on to her mobile phone. The hens take turns to peer though the glass she holds over the rock.
She offers me a go too. It takes time to steady the image of tiny pearly creatures scurrying from crack to crack. I spot one springing up as if from a toaster. “Springtails are like insects but can’t fly,” says Boss. “They have six legs and two antennae. And they have a hinged mechanism below the abdomen that propels them from danger – like Superman jumping over a 12-storey building.”
Later, I talk to Dr Emily Baxter, the senior marine conservation officer at Cumbria Wildlife Trust, which manages Humphrey Head.
“Your description certainly sounds correct for several of these critters, “ she says. “Problem is there are so many springtails. Without pictures, I am not entirely sure which ones you saw.”
I did try, Dr Baxter. But their ability to spring out-paced my ability to press the shutter release button.
