Look more closely and the pale curve of limpet shells begins to resolve itself into something deliberate: a midden, the compacted refuse of past meals, running roughly east to west for about 53 metres. A midden is essentially an ancient rubbish heap, the accumulated shell, bone, and domestic waste left behind by people who ate here, possibly over generations. This one sits only about 25 metres from another midden to its northwest, and further examples lie within 80 and 170 metres to the east-southeast, suggesting that this small tidal island once supported repeated, sustained human activity along its shoreline.

The deposit is composed mainly of limpet shells, with razor clams and oysters also present, a combination that speaks to a community harvesting what the foreshore and shallower waters could reliably provide. Two bones were recorded still in their original position within the midden, a small but telling detail: it means the deposit has not been entirely disturbed, and that something of its original layering survives. The dunes themselves are not entirely cooperative as a setting for preservation. In places, overhanging sod has collapsed and wind-blown sand has banked up against the dune face, obscuring the profile and making it harder to read the full extent of what lies beneath. That the midden remains visible at all is partly a matter of the dunes eroding enough to expose the shell layer in cross-section, the kind of accidental archaeology that coastal erosion regularly produces along Ireland's Atlantic edges.