{"id":51891,"date":"2013-10-28T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=44a7cf02ec050934dec6b5cd34baf730"},"modified":"2026-07-16T08:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:00:03","slug":"gooseneck-barnacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/gooseneck-barnacles\/","title":{"rendered":"Gooseneck Barnacles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was walking around the tip of Cape Henlopen in Lewes, Delaware last week when I came across the prettiest thing I have ever found on a beach — a bunch of gooseneck barnacles. Barnacles are filter feeding crustaceans that attach to rocks or flotsam in the marine intertidal zone. These were attached to a floating marker that had broken its rope — a bright blue and orange rigid plastic ball that said 29. I expect that when the tide came back, float 29’s gooseneck barnacle community went back out to sea.<\/p>\n

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Gooseneck Barnacles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Gooseneck Barnacles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As surprising as it now sounds, in ancient times these barnacles were thought to be the immature stage of a bird called the barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis). The shell and stalk kind of resemble the head and neck of a white-faced goose, right? Barnacle geese migrate to Britain and Ireland to overwinter there, but they nest elsewhere. Once upon a time, finding no nests, eggs, or chicks, people concluded that the birds grew from gooseneck barnacles until fully feathered and then sprang out of the sea. Very imaginative!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was walking around the tip of Cape Henlopen in Lewes, Delaware last week when I came across the prettiest thing I have ever found on a beach — a bunch of gooseneck barnacles. Barnacles are filter feeding crustaceans that attach to rocks or flotsam in the marine intertidal zone. These were attached to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2193154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-2aDNv84vLY8\/UmRQd8n3vOI\/AAAAAAAABco\/tmssvnI_ESE\/s1600\/1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Gooseneck Barnacles","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[1459,1460,5940,2450],"class_list":["post-51891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-barnacle-goose","tag-branta-leucopsis","tag-gooseneck-barnacle","tag-julie-feinstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2193154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}