Texture and pattern in the mud

The mud-coloured, mud-loving, mud-slow Asian mud snails everywhere underfoot on our beaches are usually ignored. Frankly, they're boring; billions of half-inch cones, half buried, doing nothing while the tide's out, and not much when it's in.

Occasionally, to reset my sense of wonder, I need to get down nose to nose with one or two.

Two mud snails; the foot of one, the nose of the other.

Two feet and the underside of a chin.

The third shell, on the right, is an empty, of a species not often seen here any more. The mud snails have taken over.