Month: March 2026

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.

I drove from Timaru to Kakanui today, stopping at Seadown Beach at noon. It was cold, 13 degrees, with some wind and persistent light rain. The tide was high and the beach was very sandy with few stones apparent. I had nowhere else to go until my motel became available at 2pm so I braved the conditions. I spotted some stones at the south end of the beach, among the rocks. A couple of small coves could be accessed, though a keen eye had to be kept out for the waves.

At one point, a wave came in a little more than I anticipated and I got wet gumboots. So I went back to the car and put on a dry pair of socks and gumboots, and resumed my wet-weather cove-enclosed fossicking. Quarter of an hour later, I got wet gumboots again! I eventually quit the beach at 1.40pm, sloshing my way back to the car though with a good collection of finds.

This is a great beach for quartzites. I found a couple of nice red ones – initially they can look like jaspers but close inspection shows that they are not, one of the clues being the clouds of mineral colour in them.

More common than red are yellow quartzites here. Following are two I picked up today:

Two neutral coloured quartzites (below), the first being too large to tumble but it will be placed in the garden back home – guests will walk past it on the way to “The Stones”, our AirBnB accommodation. The second has thin misty clouds of brown in it.

This small dark stone (below) seemed to have some interesting patterns in it so I put it in my bag, knowing close-up photos would show more. I think it too is a quartzite:

I sometimes find small round smooth button-like quartzites, usually with white mixed in with green, blue or grey. I spotted this green one today:

The next quartzite doesn’t have any interesting mineral clouds but, rather unusually, it contains dendrites. Dendrites are branching tree-like or fern-like mineral formations, usually manganese oxide, that grow along cracks in rocks or between rock layers. They can easily be mistaken for plant fossils. See “D is for Dendrites”, the second of these two Posts.

I found one small piece of petrified wood – I thought it was driftwood when I spotted it but I often check these out in case they turn out to be stone:

This is a dark version of another piece I found about five years ago. See this Post for some other pieces of petrified wood I have found previously on Seadown Beach.

I came across a stone of the type that looks like what is known as “plasma jasper”, characterised by the green in it:

Finally, a small piece of fossilised seafloor, probably a kind of limestone:

I’ve collected a few of these in the past and always find them interesting because of the tiny fossils in them. They are a soft stone so need only a fine grit tumble to clarify their surface – see “Kakanui Fossilised Sea Floor Stones – Only 400 Grit Tumble“.

Tomorrow sees another visit to Seadown Beach. An Index to this Series is here.