Tiny house-bearers

Snails on an evening primrose don't have as much eye appeal as my previous blip (thank you all for the lovely responses) but they are interesting to me. Why do these little creatures festoon the plants at the top of the beach here and at some other bays?

I eventually discovered that they are vineyard snails, native to the Mediterranean, and they have a habit of aestivating by climbing up stalks and fences (for safety) and staying put until the temperature goes down. This habit has them regarded as pests in some parts of the world because their shells gum up agricultural machinery but in classical times it was a signal to get on with the tending the vines. A poet, Hesiod, even wrote a verse about them.

'The House-bearer, from his winter quarters
Roused by Pleione’s gentle daughters,
Ascends the plants. These vernal days
Indolent hinds must mend their ways;
The grape-vines should have all been hoed;
Sharpen your sickles, take the road.'

Vineyard snails are thought to have arrived in Britain in the Middle Ages among straw packaging material around imported goods. 
Recently archaeologists have used this fact when trying to determine  the original date of the Cerne Giant ( a well-known British hill figure considered to represent a fertility god, for obvious reasons). Discovering these snail shells in the lower layers suggests it was created after the arrival of  vineyard snails and is therefore not prehistoric.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cerne-abbas-giant-isnt-prehistoric-1893044
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-53313064

(I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Cernuella virgata as microscopic when it's not.)