Walking the Beach #85 (Jan 08)

It’s freezing but warmer than yesterday mainly because the air is almost still so we face very little wind chill. We had about an inch of snow a few days ago. Temperatures are staying low and reaching the high 20’s some nights, but warm enough so hardly any snow remains. The day before the snow we had periods of rain and sleet with dry periods as we walked. Snow came late the next day, so we avoided a walk that weather.

The cold hasn’t prevented watermen from harvesting oysters. Today the usual eight tongers are mid river and the small dredger manned by two guys is close to shore near the turnaround point. One day eighteen mid-river tongers appeared, the maximum so far.

Izzy is wearing a fleece-lined jacket that hampers movement some and he may not like, but on sunless days, like today, he needs it. Sometimes it prevents his passage through beached brush and fallen tree tops and once pulled it right off as he passed through. Today I carry him over a couple spots but on the way back remove the coat so he can make his own way. A short ways later, though, he started shivering proving the coat’s value, and it went back on.

Water weeping out of the bank has formed groups of icicles one to two feet long at a half dozen places. The cold also makes nuggets and baseball-sized clumps of soil – mostly clay – break loose leaving a sprinkling along the base. A few pieces roll several feet towards the river leaving individual tracks in softer sand.

A single black rubber glove with yellow cuff that washed up a couple weeks ago may have a mate. It may just be moving up and down the beach or a pair that haven’t been visible on the same day, so I have to watch closer to see if there’s a right and a left or just the one each time one appears. Such challenges are found on the beach!

Sand covered the small upside-down bathtub that became visible near the beginning of our walk so for about a year there have only been a few days that it was visible. Sand has also smoothed over most rubble and debris, the clumps of broken limestone, blocks of clay, concrete and shells. Some of the excelsior material that must be a form of water weed seems to float to the top of the sand, but fallen leaves and even most of the persistent tulip tree seeds are now gone. Leaves from cypress trees lasted the longest and migrated only about fifty yards downstream, but are now mostly gone.

We had a few days of high-high tides with some wind awhile back that deposited a wheel with tire amongst tree branches and trunk we crawl under just before the promontory. All the other discarded tires we see lack that center part. This one looks to be from a tractor or commercial truck.

Bird life is erratic in this weather. Small birds, the sparrow, wrens and finches, are around in small numbers in the brush at the top of the bank, but herons and eagles are rare sights. On the other hand the pelican that landed near the small dredger a few days ago was unusual, and every few days a flock of twenty to 100 canada geese appear on the water. This morning an unusual sight was a group of eight small water birds near the shore that dived as a group. The cloud cover and low sun reduced the light level so the birds appear to be black. They weren’t unusual except that after seeing them and then finding them suddenly gone when you looked made made you wonder where they went until they suddenly popped back up.

Walking the Beach #84 (Jan 08)

We went from high temperatures in the 40’s to the 70’s yesterday and today. The tide is high and just a slight breeze, not enough to properly cool us on the way back when Izzy and I are the warmest.

Small patches of an excelsior-looking stuff is strung along the water line.  It began showing up about ten days ago and may be decaying water weed. The last couple days a few mustard colored patches have also appeared. It looks a little like pollen except for being the wrong time of year. Lots of tulip tree seeds are still strung along the beach, too.

The water is quite clear compared with muddy days. That’s due to the lack of wind to stir up bottom mud and rain running off farm fields.

A brown plastic teacup style coffee cup washed up close to the beach yesterday and hasn’t moved today, just floating there right-side up. Another glove, black rubber with yellow cuff, for the right hand has appeared, too. The biggest find is what looks like an arrow head or spear head. It’s a couple inches long and the tip seems to be missing. A neighbor thinks it might be a scraping tool.

Another slab of blue clay has detached from the bank near the turnaround point. It looks to be about the same size as the last.

Older blocks of this stuff that’s submerged along the shore releases little bits under water that wash into small windrows just like the sand and shell pieces. The difference is that the these innocent rows of blue clay are very sticky and cling like glue if you step in any.

Dew has moistened a thin layer of sand this morning. As you walk the damp sand clings to your soles and sprays off the heels with each step.

The oyster tongers are out in force, twelve boats this morning. The small single dredger is also at his usual place, only one operator this morning and no visible dog.   It never met Daisy and she is now being kept close to home due to complaints from a neighbor.

Yesterday a larger dredger accompanied the smaller for the first time. It’s surprising to see one so close to the shore.

Jet contrails have been visible most mornings for the last week. One morning twelve active trails were visible. Today only three are present. The many old trails are scattered across the sky looking like thinly spread pickup sticks.

Walking the Beach #83 (Jan 08)

 

It’s finally getting cold so there’s ice beginning to accumulate along the high tide line and icycles hanging down the riverbank. It’ll be down in the teens at night for a couple days if the variable weather reports are accurate this time. Meanwhile we’ve had several days of rain of an inch or more. The last rain loosened clay at two points on the river bank. The clay was mixed with soil or sand at the first place just where we reach the beach and washed over the beach like a five-foot-wide brown stain across the gray sand. Close to the twenty-foot high bank a couple pickup truck loads of the stuff are piled up, gooey and treacherous, unlike the second place down the beach around the promontory. A sheet of blue clay, there, a foot thick and some twenty feet square detached from the forty-foot high bank and collapsed into a chunky tumbled pile at the base.

A small sink hole has reappeared in the sand on the high side of the first jetty of concrete blocks close to the bank. Sand on the high side is level with the top of the concrete but below the base of these, several feet lower, on the other side, downstream. The hole is caused by water washing under the foot of the concrete hollowing out a space causing the sand to spill or leach out until the sink hole appears on the opposite side. Right now the hole is several small holes over a couple feet, close to the concrete and looks to be only a few inches deep. The previous version of this had filled in some months back when the tide and weather drove enough sand over the area. It takes a very high tide or strong wind to push sand this far in, fifty or sixty feet.

The sky is very clear today, but no contrails are visible except for very short tails from three jets high above. It’s windy, too, and more so on the way back; enough to blow a little sand across the beach. And with the cold it makes me wish for gloves.

Birds are still pretty scarce, but an eagle was out two days ago along with two herons. Usually only one heron is seen as we walk along. Daisy, the new black dog, is pretty scare, too, the last couple days. It might be due to the colder weather, but more likely that she just hasn’t been let out by the time Izzy and I do our walk.

Sand has been moved around enough over the last couple weeks so that the space under the one fallen tree trunk I have to crawl under requires getting down on your hands and knees instead of duck-walking under it. The tides have begun to move some of this out. The difference in height looks to be only about six inches between having to crawl or duck walk. At low-low tide the whole tree can be skirted, and close to the bank there’s a place where you can climb over at high tide, but going under is easier for an older guy….

No water men are out at all today. Days when the far-out oyster tongers have appeared they usually number in four to nine boats. Only one boat was out on New Year’s Day, the dredger that comes in close. Only Izzy was along that day and we encountered a black dog that looked much like Daisy except it had a dark collar while Daisy’s is fire engine red. Izzy knew it wasn’t Daisy right off and acted his normal aggressive little-dog self, driving off his opponent. The fellow in the close-in boat called to us then and explained it’s his dog. He lets the dog swim to shore for exercise, then swim back to the boat. Later I got a photo of the dog perched on the boat’s bow barking at a pelican that made a nearby water landing. I’ve not seen any other pelicans recently so that was another surprise.

On the way back I found a chunk of fossilized whale vertebrae about the size of two hands clasped together. It may not be part of a vertebrae, but seems to be to big and solid for any other part. It was only a portion of the vertebrae with part of one wing. The location was much further downstream than where some ten or eleven pieces have appeared in the past.

Walking the Beach #82 (Dec 2007)

 

This may be the last entry for the year due the busy holidays. It’s the day before Christmas; very calm, clear and cool but the humidity makes it feel warmer. For two days the tide has been up to the riverbank where we access the beach and this is the first day we could walk along the river, although the tide is still quite high. Daisy was house-bound for a week after a neutering operation and this is the first we’ve seen her, not that Izzy missed her heavy-footed jostling efforts to play with him. She has the endurance, flexibility and nimbleness of youth. I’ve learned to be forewarned by the slight tinkle of her dog tags as she rockets up from behind in case she happens to clip my leg, because she can hit right at the knee and drop you like a professional football player if you don’t brace for it.

Another reason Daisy has been house bound is that she had been in heat and a male dog had appeared, mated with her and hadn’t left the area. He appears to be a stray too with no collar, but healthy. It looks like these were pups last year for Christmas and abandoned now just before Christmas when a new crop of puppy will be given away! Daisy’s new owners don’t need another dog and placing found-dog ads in the local newspaper didn’t locate an owner, so the animal control folks were brought in. The male is very cautious, though, and a trap had to be set. It seems to have worked after a few days because the trap is gone, Daisy has been allowed out, and the male hasn’t appeared.

A heavy rain occurred right after the last high-high tide leveled and smoothed the beach. It changed the smooth sand to a dimpled surface.  The next high tide, a smaller one,  smoothed the sand part way up again. Then in a few places where water flowed off the bank it left a woven pattern. Most of the fallen leaves that had collected in windrows are gone, probably buried.

Only contrails are present overhead this morning and a good twenty old ones are visible, but grouped on one side of the sky like they were all pushed over there. Four active trails are being added to this collection.

Two more dead birds are on the beach close to our starting point and a few tens of yards apart. Both are seagulls and neither appear damaged.

Only three oyster boats are out, two far out but further downstream than normal, and the one small boat that works close to shore. A container ship is headed upstream when we start out. Behind the ship a quarter mile or so a tug pulls a large black barge. Barges are often loaded with piles of sand or gravel that make characteristic shapes above the barge. This barge shows none of this, but the sides look high which could mean it’s empty and riding high or just that it’s a different type of barge with a different load.

We make it almost to the turnaround point before the high tides stops us. On the way back Daisy discovers and attacks a large cube of Styrofoam and tries to demolish it leaving little pieces of plastic at several places on the beach before I can wrest it away.

An interesting bullet-shaped pink Styrofoam float marker with a green band and engraved owner number washed ashore. It’s totally covered with barnacle footprints where they attached and then broke away. It looks like it has been used for a few years before breaking loose. All the others I’ve seen have been white and painted one or more colors. This one looks like the pink color is throughout.

Walking the Beach #81

Only a few leaves are left on trees and a small windrow of fallen leaves have washed ashore along the beach. Over several days the leaves have mixed with sand and some are being ground up. This must be what leads to periodic swaths of ‘tea leaves’ appearing, as the leaves disintegrate and age.

Most leaves are larger maple, sycamore and oak varieties. A small amount are tiny, fingernail sized and som of tese are seeds that may be from tulip trees. They look like pine cone seeds except the seed end of the ‘leaf’ or petal is angular, not round like the pine seed. Very few tulip trees are in the area so I thought. The beached seeds must number in the tens of thousands so few tulip trees are certainly scattered along the river nearby.  On warmer days small flies gather along these areas perhaps because the moisture level is just right.

Kudzu leaves are totally gray now. They don’t fall off, or not immediately, and when they do will stay with the vine unlike tree leaves that launch from a higher altitude.

Today is cold and it looks like warm weather has finally finished making short visits. It’s breezy, but not cold enough to be uncomfortable. Still a light coat is welcome.

Far-out tongers, often two to a boat, have been out every day. Today they are strung out like morse code with one then a hundred-yard space downstream to a group of three followed by another hundred yards to one, then a hundred yards, two, and a hundred and finally another single boat.

The oyster dredgers appear sporadically, now, sometimes one small and one larger, at widely separated locations. A crab boat is even less visible, but does still appear every few days.

 

At one small area where runoff washed a thin layer of clay from the bank over the sand at its base, the half-inch thick clay collected in a oval depression several feet long and a couple wide. When the clay dried it broke into small pieces and each curled, the result looking like a shallow bowl full of thick brown potato chips.

A thin layer of liquid clay spread across the soft sand can make a surprisingly firm surface when it dries. It can be treacherously slippery and soft, too, while wet. The amount of moisture isn’t obvious until you step on or into a surface. The firm version is interesting. The wet is the type that stays on the sides of your shoes until scrapped free with a stick!

No new gopher tracks have appeared. The couple places where they appeared are barely visible and would be long gone had they been closer to the water line where tidal movement could reach them.

Two sea bird bodies are on the beach, one near the low pier and the other farther along a couple hundred yards. It’s a seagull near the pier, high up on the sand and looking undamaged with beautiful sleek white and gray feathers. The other is in the water and also looks undamaged. It’s smaller than the gull, a white body and black wings from just a quick look. The bill is short and sturdy. The legs are pink and webbed.

Between these two bodies is a splash of white feathers on top of a rootball at the end of a dislodged hardwood tree on the beach, the one I have to creep under or climb over each trip. It’s seven or eight feet to the top of the root and dirt cluster. The feathers could belong to seagull, but probably not to the unruffled looking body nearby, by the low pier. Nothing other than feathers are visible.

Daisy, who likes to drag half-decayed fish and birds home takes a liking to the gull and speeds triumphantly home with the prize. Izzy pays no attention such things.

 

Walking the Beach #80 (Dec 07)

 

It’s getting colder now. We’ve had days that started in the 60’s and dropped twenty degrees by evening, while a normal day starts and ends cool with a warm mid day. Today it’s calm, overcast and grey, as well as in the 50’s, which will drop to the 20’s tonight for the first hard freeze. It’s a good day to rake leaves; they’re dry and won’t blow about. The high tide level on the beach is marked with small windrows of leaves and while leaves still trickle down, the flow is dwindling. The colors are fading, too.

We walk later nowadays to capture warmer temperatures, just the opposite of summertime. No birds today. Heard a single cry of loon yesterday. A couple days ago another flock of cormorants attacked a patch of river but without the seagulls.

The small oyster dredger is back near the turnaround place. Several far out tongers are back after a few absent days. Meanwhile one larger dredger appears each day somewhere in the bay.

Workman gloves wash ashore from time to time; never in pairs. Most are rubber coated, a black one here, yellow there, blue another time. Once it was a knit glove that could have been used as a liner. I started making photos of them. One stuck up out of the sand like it was the last part of a buried person.

The last two days one or two gophers have left tunnels in the beach sand near the base of the bank. A single tunnel in two places meanders along about thirty feet. The two places are fifty yards apart.

One day while looking in the vegetation along the bank base for a small stick to throw for Izzy a sand spur attacked my finger. It’s the first one I’ve seen in our area although they are plentiful along the ocean south of us. It is not a welcomed discovery and hopefully won’t be repeated.

Walking the Beach #79 (Nov 07)

Another cold morning, but gray and overcast, like snow weather, but no wind and the tide is way out. Very small ripples are slowly rolling in, so small that where the water meets the sand, there’s no motion towards shore. Traffic noise from a distant highway can be heard because it’s so still. The traffic noise is a constant rumble punctuated, as they say, with periodic big truck sounds .

One lone heron ahead and downstream of us – Daisy, Izzy and myself – lifts off from the shore and heads further down. Later it, or a relative further out, heads upstream about the same time as two canada geese head the opposite way. Those two may have been part of the trio that went up yesterday, perhaps taking a relative home.

A small woodpeker surprises me by its nearby appearance on some vegetation covering a piece of riverbank that had collapsed onto the beach months ago. It’s black, white and red; probably a piliated type. It makes a peeping sound as it flits around and soon disappears on up the bank. Woodpeckers like kingfishers have a built-in 50 yard rule where they never let you get any closer than that and it’s rare I manage to surprise them as I round some piece of the bank or big tree stump.

The dead rat/muskrat is gone with no evidence of who or what removed it. The tide did not come up that high, but where it did the water was splashing a lot because just above the faint high water line are little splashes of sand tossed on top of the smoother base.

No evidence of the robin from yesterday is visible around the now-exposed tree on the mud flat. Nothing washed up on the beach, either. That was a strange event, it’s flight into the river.

The dogs only follow partway today for some reason. They often lag behind, checking all the places around the piers where other dogs have been, then catching up as I reach the turnaround. While Daisy was with us at the beginning, only Izzy appears as I head back. Sometimes he also heads home on his own. Today he was barking at some black bird or crow on the beach before I arrived.

Not far from where the dead rat had been there was a bad smell for several days that seemed to come from the bank or one of several patches of vegetation at its base. The dogs even nosed around the bank as if they noticed it, too. It’s the first time for such a strong sewer-like stench and it could be another dead animal, but one isn’t obvious and the smell discourages much searching.

Some wood burning is also noticeable today because the air isn’t moving enough to disperse it. This isn’t the pleasant leaf burning odor, but a more acrid smell caused by smoldering wood.

Eight or nine far out tongers are present and a nearer single moving dredger. The tongers are always clustered with a couple outcasts at either end. It looks like a bunch of guys having a bull session while working. Perhaps the outcasts really are being left out.

On the way back some strange rumblings can be heard lasting for half a minute or so. They happen a couple times and can finally be identified as big rocks being dumped, probably for a riverbank protection project. The rumbling is very distinctive. These rocks oftentimes weigh a quarter ton and make such low rumblings that if you are next to the truck you can feel the sounds as well as hear them.

Walking the Beach #78 (Nov 07)

It’s cool this morning and windy, windy enough to whip your pants legs, tumble leaves along the beach, make you keep your hands in your pockets and lean slightly into it on the way back. So going down was easier, but you know it’s going to be worse the other way; we jogged part of the way back just to get it over with. So it’s long sleeved shirt, jacket and knit cap weather.

The wind is blowing parallel to the beach, but the waves are rolling straight in. It’s like the wind changes direction, 90 degrees, as soon as it hits land.

The waves are dirty from churned mud they stir up as they come ashore. The wind has cleared the air, pretty much, and only a few light clouds are up there. Despite the noisy wind and waves you can still hear a boat motor coming over the water.

The leaves make tracks along the sand. It looks like many tiny animals with different types paws have scampered about.

The tide is out and just before the new #2 fancy pier (versus the #1 fancy pier of long standing) it has uncovered the bottom of a small cast iron bathtub. It’s covered with heavy rust and the four feet are just rusty nubs. It’s only about three feet long, which seems a little short for a bathtub and is buried near the remains of a set of steel steps, the type used in factories or on big ships. Both could have been thrown over the bank, been thrown off a ship or been washed out during a hurricane.   Just the very bottom is visible.

The #2 fancy pier has two boat lifts as does the #1, but only one has a roof.  Both of the #1 lifts have roofs.

Some pier owners have brought in their boats for winter storage. The #1 pier still has one lift occupied. (The lifts are made of two broad slings that can be lowered under the water so the boat can glide into them.) This pier owner also has a freestanding platform nearby in the sand. It’s about ten feet square and mounted on pilings similar to the pier with a set of steps to the platform that’s five feet high. A small flat-bottomed boat with a 2.5hp motor is hoisted by hand under the platform in a homemade trailer made of plastic pipe with two big plastic wheels. The wheels leave crenalated tracks in the sand, tracks with square notches running up each side.

The robin was gone from yesterday’s safe place, but Daisy was with us and just past that point startled one, probably the same, from nearby kudzu. Like yesterday, it flew for the water, but this time it went straight out where a fallen tree trunk was partly submerged. It almost made the tree then went into the water and was gone! Daisy followed it and couldn’t find a trace, but kept looking. This was about a quarter mile from the turnaround point and the dog was still searching around the tree when Izzy and I returned about ten minutes later. I kept looking back to see if she found anything, but nothing happened.

A small flock of Canada Geese, about twenty-five, flew up in tight formation a few hundred yards downstream from the turnaround. They were probably startled by someone because they settled right back into the water.

The dead muskrat, or rat, is face up, now, and you can see its teeth, two long ones up and two down, both in the middle like a rabbit.  It’s pretty furry, too. The paws don’t look webbed, if that’s what muskrats have.

Walking the Beach #77 (Nov 07)

 

 

Fall leaves are leaving a thin layer along the beach and more are slowly being added with the gentle breeze this morning. It’s cloudy, but several commercial jets and one fighter appear beneath this during our walk.

A new dog often goes with us. She is Daisy, a very young, mostly black lab, mixed with something else and very energetic. Izzy is a tenth her size and goes on the attack when she wants to play, which is often. He has little choice, she is so heavy handed/footed and young-clumsy. She was a stray without a home who turned up a couple months back and a neighbor took pity. This morning she flushed a Robin from the kudzu and captured it at the waterline. It must have been injured or sick for this to happen. While it was rescued and left in a safe place, tomorrow we’ll see if it survived.

The description of medium-sized oyster boats with the V type hoist was a little off on looking at the only one out this morning. The hoist is closer to the bow than the stern.

The river water is much clearer nowadays. This is due to the shortfall of rain. Normal rainfall washes topsoil from farm fields and it clouds the river; helps form the mud flats, too. Less rain means less soil in the water.

A dead rodent on the beach is a first. It might be a rat or a small muskrat. They look very similar and even googling each hasn’t helped, so far.

It’s warmer today; back to shirt sleeve weather for the moment. Three Canada Geese fly northward overhead, less because of the weather than nearby forage.

Jellyfish have been in the news lately, but not here. A few small ones have washed ashore, a couple inches across and lacking any visible tentacles. The news has been that huge numbers of very large jellyfish are appearing around the world and the most toxic forms have spread from Australia to other continents.

 

Walking the Beach #76 (Nov 07)

T-shirt weather has changed to a light jacket version, but today we had both. During our walk it was cool with enough humidity and still air to bring moderate fog. A loon sounded twice, a bird that’s not normally heard here.

Bird life declined during the hot and dry season and the only regular birds were one or two herons and periodic kingfishers. Great white splotches along the beach showed where herons have bathroomed, but during the walks the birds are always high up in trees along the bank.  The loon is an exception.   Another are two pelicans that appeared several days back, the first since springtime. They were heading upstream.

Another exception was a flock of cormorant mixed with seagulls.  Over two hundred cormorants were swimming, diving and flying about over a football-sized patch of river.  The seagull were flying amongst the airborne cormorants; none in the water.  Looked like the seagull were harassing the other birds, trying to steal what they were eating, probably a school of fish.

Signs of the river otter appeared again at the turnaround point and its tracks are often visible as we proceed. Having an oft-washed beach leaves a clean slate making such tracks easily visible.

A small oyster dredger that started with two men and shifted to one is usually close-in, near the turnaround. Today it was absent, though other, larger boats are out. My son noted, during a visit, that while the close-in boats move about, the group that gathers much farther out seems to be stationary. Through the binoculars you could see that the watermen in these were using oyster tongs. An experienced neighbor explained that the distant oyster beds were public and only oyster tongs can be used. The tongs, which are about ten feet long, require a lot of upper body strength for all-day sessions. Google the term if you want more info and to see pictures.

 

The tongers were absent for a few weeks and on each side of that time only a couple were out. Recently as many as 18 of these ‘far out’ boats were present, the most seen at that location this year. All summer, also, two crab boats have been fishing the same area. Crabbers move over the entire bay while the oyster boats that do move only cover one or several small areas of an acre or so. The crab traps used here are black-coated wire, so when a crabber has a load of traps to distribute the back half of the boat starts off topped with a huge black cube of stacked traps.

The oyster boats are of three types. The tongers use a simple open boat with no superstructure, usually. The small dredgers are similar to tonger boats but have an 8-foot post mounted about midway, closer to the stern than the bow, and topped with an arm that extends about 4 feet out. A pulley at the end of this arm allows the dredge to be dropped and lifted. I don’t think the post pivots. Rather, the operator has a second line attached to the dredge to swing it into the boat. Several guy wires anchor the post but are almost invisible from a distance.

The next larger size dredger has the post, a larger one, and a slightly longer beam attached at the base angles out like a fishing pole, forming a V with the first post. Wires anchor the first post and one connects the top of it to the angled beam where the pulley for the dredge is attached. The bottom of the posts are attached more towards the stern than the smaller boats and I think the angled beam can swivel once a loaded dredge comes up to swing the load aboard.