Following the sea on island paradise

PERHAPS even more fascinating than the multicoloured birds and butterflies seen on this Thai island just south of Burma are the ghost crabs, almost as invisible and fleeting as ghosts.

Sand-grey and no bigger than a euro, they scud away at an extraordinary speed, running sideways on the tips of their toes, all but airborne, especially in a breeze, using it to carry them all the faster across the beach.

Equally fascinating are the patterns made by the sand they excavate for their burrows — starbursts or palm trees in perfect symmetry, geometrically precise patterns radiating from the small hole where they hide. Sometimes, the lines of pinhead-sized sand-balls of which they are composed stretch from one starburst to another, like maps of the constellations, the night sky traced on the beach. I can imagine a novelist of the magic-realism school creating, as a character, an old man who daily scours the sand at looking for the perfect star chart and, indeed, I believe it would not be hard to find simple groupings like The Plough or The Great Bear marked out, serendipitously, by these earthbound, small-brained crabs.