Dark stones abound on the beaches of the South Island, and generally I ignore them. They seem common and uninteresting to me. However, every now and then one such stone attracts my attention because upon closer inspection it proves intriguing. It is the alternating dark and light bands of this stone that drew my eye.
I don’t know what kind of stone this is. It is relatively thin and flat – it would be an excellent stone to skim across the water’s surface.
There appears to be a scratch down one side of the stone, possible made in the tumbling barrel. But closer inspection shows the “scratch” continues over the bottom of the stone and slightly up the other side. It is more likely to be something like a very thin vein of quartz.
In preparing the close-ups, I found that darkening the image first (using “Shadow” in Picasa) and then brightening it (using “Highlight”) produced the best result – these bring out the bands and show the grain more clearly:
I just went to Birdlings Flat for the first time on Monday. I picked up a few stones and stumbled upon your blog while I was trying to figure out what I found! Thanks for your detailed posts. I know I have some jasper and at least one agate for sure. The rest is a mystery. Now I’m going to need to figure out how to polish the darn things.
I just went to Birdlings Flat for the first time on Monday, and I stumbled upon your blog while I was trying to figure out what rocks we collected. I can see we have some agate and jasper here, not quite sure what the rest is. Thank you for your detailed and informative posts; I’ve just spent an hour checking out your site! Now I’ll have to figure out how to polish these darn things.