March 2026 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 4, Stones Appear on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, Saturday 14 March

I spent just over an hour on Seadown Beach this afternoon. It was warmer than yesterday, reaching 21 degrees, with few clouds in the sky. Though there was a stiff breeze so I donned my woollen hat and scarf. The state of the beach had changed significantly – a lot of sand had been removed by the waves overnight, exposing many more stones. You can see this in the comparative photos below (the first four), although the views are not strictly exactly the same:

As usual, I collected a few nice quartzites. This one I consider the most interesting visually, with many different colours and shapes:

Five red and/or yellow quartzites, some having an unusual patterning:

Two other-coloured quartzites, the first a light green, the second a very smooth white/grey/green with interesting band-like features:

I found two stones today that might have tiny bryozoan fossils in them – see this Post for more about them. It is very difficult to see the fossils with the naked eye so I look out for stones of a particular brown colour and then check them out by taking photos and looking at the close-ups. This is the first one:

and this is the second one:

In both cases, there are small areas which look to contain bryozoa.

Three of the jaspers I found today are below – the third one was particularly difficult to get a good photo of because it has a rounded surface and picked up lots of reflection:

Finally, a small quartz stone with thin veins of colour through it:

I take selfies only on very rare occasions – but this is how I look now, if you’re looking for me on a beach. I recently had a haircut and beard trim, which is one of the reasons for the scarf and hat. My glasses get darker as the sun gets brighter. I am carrying my small green backpack, and I’ll often have a black cloth bag with stones in it in one hand.

A third Kakanui fossick, before moving on to the south coast, encountered changed beach conditions again. An Index to this Series is here.