Country diary: A sandhopper vanishes, too quick for the human eye | Tom Allan

Lannacombe Beach, south Devon: They are crustaceans the size of a housefly, and their presence here shows the beach is healthy Belly down on the grey-tan sand of a south Devon beach, I am turning out sandcastle after sandcastle from a green bucket with a starfish on it, when I notice that the sand is seething with life. "Grasshopper!" my almost-two-year-old daughter exclaims, and she's half right. The creatures flicking away from my feet, and from the ruins of the sand turret she has taken such ...