I decided in the morning to walk to the beach in Faro and I saw a lot of little holes and I couldn’t initially work out what had made them. I briefly considered various possibilities, most of them wrong and involving baby anacondas, before deciding that I should perhaps stop inventing ecological theories and actually look more carefully.
When I looked more carefully, it was evident that there were thousands of these little crabs, known as fiddler crabs which were having a lovely time in the mudflats of the Ria Formosa. These are the sort of creatures that are easy to miss if one is walking too quickly, which I obviously wasn’t because it was far too hot for unnecessary athleticism.
The little crabs scuttling about on the mud and the males carrying one oversized claw like a tiny and deeply impractical handbag. They are generally identified as Afruca tangeri, formerly known as Uca tangeri, and they live in burrows on the intertidal mudflats. The enlarged claw is used by males for display, territorial behaviour and attracting females. Give the numbers of them, all seemingly doing useful things, it was all very charming to watch them early on a Tuesday morning in June…..