Wlking the Beach #30 (Apr 07)

 We are still having this northeaster. They usually come through in a single day like a general storm, but more intense and with specific wind direction. The wind part has stayed with us for three days. So it’s about twenty mph in our face when we come back up the beach, but not very noticeable on the way down.   It masks out most other sounds.

The air is acquiring its old pre-storm haze, although this may be from dust kicked up by the wind more than exhaust fumes. The wind is slowly turning the beach surface into a wind swept appearance with the start of tiny dunes in the dry area.

We’ve a few clouds in two layers. The puffy low level version of yesterday are still around and above them are now small patches of wispy thin cirrus clouds that look like that angle hair used to decorate Christmas trees.

More airplanes can be seen today. There are two big commercial passenger jets, one passing over the river upstream and the other downstream. A two-engine propeller-driven military-looking plane comes up from down river. One small, short contrail is high overhead.

One mature eagle flys off from a bank top tree as we approach.  Either a young eagle or another raptor flys out over the water carrying some twigs and seems uncertain as to where to take its load.  Perhaps our presence is the problem.

Only two oyster boats are out and look to be quite small. These may be the type where hand-held tongs are used to scoop up oysters. The boats are mid-river, as usual, but widely separated.

The tide is almost at its peak and regular wave action is coming ashore. It’s high enough to prevent Izzy and I from getting past the big tree obstacle half way down the beach. The water is dirty, too, and has been since the start of the northeaster from runoff and wave action. A small amount of new tree debris — twigs, old flower parts, some maple seeds — is showing up at the high water mark.

I make use of the pull up tree going and coming — only five reps each way — and we head back for the beach access point. Our alternate road, the one leading to the highway, also runs through the neighborhood over to the last place upstream opposite to the direction we normally take. We head that way to add a little more distance and this road ends back at the beach, then back home.  

It’s very quiet back off the beach in the woods.  No wind is apparent in the tree tops and you would not think the beach would be windy, a typical condition for us.

Another broken pine is near the last home where we turn around.  It looks to be the size of the one that toppled to the beach yesterday, but in this case only the top twenty feet broke off. Again the pine looks healthy, past tense since the broken part contains all the green needles.

 Two dead pines stand nearby that are about the same size.  They have lost much of their bark which shattered into small chunks across the ground. I’ve seen bark blown off similar trees, but this looks like it just fell off as the trees were whipped about. These pines have been killed by pine beetles or pine bark beetles, a continuing problem for which the only solution is to destroy the tree. This is done to reduce the beetle population but I don’t think would help with long-dead trees because the beetles have probably left the building. —

Walking the Beach #29 (Apr 07)

 This day started out with a very clear and very blue sky, but it quickly began filling with puffy white clouds that later changed to gray as they thickened up. It’s still windy, about as windy as yesterday though the northeaster is supposed to be over. The wind direction is different, coming at a diagonal across the river, so moderate waves can be seen far out into the river and they crash regularly against the beach. For us these are large waves, but only measure ten or so inches high. They make enough noise to be overwhelm any wind sounds.

The tide is close to high level and waves seem like they should drive water further up the beach, but the wet line is actually a few inches lower than yesterday. I know this because when we reach the place with the new chunk of bank on the beach, there’s now a narrow path between the wet clay edge and the water line compared with yesterday when we had to walk through the yucky clay.  Well, some clay had to wash away; no I can see the foot prints from yesterday.

The sand level has dropped generally, too.  I can barely reach the limb on the pull up tree which is at least six inches higher, now.

Another major change on the beach is a good sized pine tree near the new chunk of bank. They aren’t related, but are fifty feet apart. The broken tree trunk can be seen on the lip of the bank about twenty feet above. It snapped off about ten feet above the ground, then tipped over so the top landed at the base of the bank, and the fat end then tipped on over into the water. Right now there’s a patch of small pine branches with attached pine needles against the bank and a trunk that extends out into and under the water. I can’t seen where the end is. It looks healthy, not diseased or rotten, and the thicker end looks to be about eighteen inches across — a good sized tree, maybe forty feet tall; not a lot of limbs except for a cluster at the top.

 The winds did not seem strong enough to have caused this, but we sometimes get these micro bursts that are like tiny tornadoes and do serious damage to just a couple trees. Walking back I can see a lot of serious sized trees along the lip, trees much larger than the pine.  I wouldn’t want to be nearby if they decided to topple.

The wind is in our faces as Izzy and I return, but not too bothersome. It’s cool though, especially once the sun is blocked by clouds.

I just noticed today there aren’t any boats at the fancy pier, nor for our immediate neighbor. They may have been moved several days ago. The fancy pier roof is, in fact, completed.

No oyster boats again, nor birds, nor contrails, and I heard what may have been a jet fighter, but saw nothing.

Near where we get on the beach I find a small chunk of fossilized whale bone to add to our collection. It’s the size of the end of a human thigh bone, about five inches long. It had washed up and was lying on top of the sand. —-

Walking the Beach #28 (Apr 07)

Sunday it rained all the blustery day and everyone stayed under cover. Today started off with clear skies that quickly clouded back up. Weather reports predicted steady winds of thirty mpg with gusts to fifty.

The river is remarkably calm, dappled, but few regular waves so water laps at the shore in slow fits and starts. Wind-whipped places appeare suddenly on the surface when bursts of swirling wind tousle small areas of water.

The tide is almost at the high mark and had been further inland yesterday judging from the smoothed area. Beyond that, while wet, the sand still mirrors the river’s dappled look made by past human activity.  Three inches of rain we had did not smooth that area to any degree. Pollen still shows along the same area, though only for about fifty yards, where it appeared before the storm. It could be new pollen or old.

Trees lining the shore are whipped as brief gusts blow through them and most background noise is from the wind. No contrails were visible while the sky was clear and no boats of any type are on the river. One or two birds make quick flights over the water before returning to shore.

The amount of rainfall caused enough water to be discharged from three spots along the bank to wash about six inch deep sand layer away and expose the clay underneath. One of these showed a stream bed about six feet wide.  The exposed area for the other was less than a foot. Two other places where small creeks continuously flow across the beach show enlarged areas of sand removal.

Only one place along the bank shows significant change. Here a huge chunk about fifteen feet square slipped down about fifteen feet to the beach, reaches the waterline and is staining the water as waves roll against the red soil. Two small cedar trees and a half dozen small hardwood trees sprout, undisturbed, from the top.

No debris at all was washed ashore by the storm. The beach looks cleaner than usual.

The fancy pier work has reached the shingling phase and should be complete today. The extension ladder is now gone from the low damaged pier and is nowhere to be seen. —-

 

Walking the Beach #27 (Apr 07)

 We are expecting a northeaster this weekend and today looks like the beginning phase. The sky is covered with a solid but thin gray overcast. A commercial jetliner passes over the river downstream as we reach the beach where the tide is almost at its high mark. The air is pretty still, but a small breeze can be felt when we come back. No oyster boats at all this morning though the water is very calm.

We don’t go far. It’s Saturday and folks with dogs are out on the beach by the fancy pier. All but a couple roofing panels are in place on the pier’s second boat lift and several men are working around it. I hope the northeaster doesn’t cause any damage, there. We are suppose to get up two two inches of rain and winds in the thirty to forty mph range; that’s if it actually arrives. One prediction is for the center of what looks like a small hurricane, the northeaster, will pass directly over us. However, the weather changes constantly around us and we may get nothing at all. The rain would be useful, of course. We should have had about six inches for the year and have only had a couple so far. It was like this last year and we ended up with more than normal by December. Of course we did have eighteen inches in about one day of October which certainly made up local shortages in a most undesirable way.

Anyway, Izzy and I just go a short ways, then turn around towards our alternate path. On the way one short stretch of sand directly against the riverbank catches my eye because of many little grooves in the sand. It looks like hundreds of earthworms have crawled about over a twenty foot stretch along the bank and a couple feet wide. No evidence of what made the marks or where they went; no worm holes. Another mystery.

I see more of the bare foot prints on the short beach we covered, the same area where they were found yesterday. I just didn’t see all of them, probably, though several look like they could have been made more recently than others.

We head up the access road and back again. It starts to sprinkle on us about half way up, but not enough to be unpleasant and rather than intensifying, as expected, the sprinkle stops after a couple hours.

The pine trees along the way are releasing pollen now. A slight shake of a branch or tap on pine cone bud produces a shower of yellow powder. The northeaster will be beneficial for the allergy sufferers, if it materializes, by releasing that pollen and wetting the results down to remove it from the air.

The tent caterpillars have produced tents as large as a foot across. There are a good fifteen sites with them along our route. I can reach the tents in about ten of these and demolish them with a stick. They don’t seem to reform once disturbed like that and I disturb thousands. Later, inside the house, I feel something tickling my neck and brush it off to find a small tent caterpillar. A couple large ones were apparent on one pants leg, too, when I returned home.

It’s cool and the light breeze picks up a little by the time we make it back and start stowing anything that will be blown about by big winds.—-

Walking the Beach #26 (Apr 07)

A perfectly clear day with eight oyster boats in their usual location. The air is calm and water is barely washing ashore at half tide. Enough breeze exists, however, to dapple the water, the dapples changing with shifts in wind direction.

Three guys are now working on the fancy pier roof job. They could be done by tomorrow or no more than a third day from the looks of the progress being made.

Not a contrail in sight today during the entire walk. Sounds from fighter jets and one prop job occur, but nothing visible to see. On the way back a lone helicopter appears up river near the reserve fleet for a few minutes then disappears.

The lone Great Blue Heron around the promontory is spooked again and squawks as he flys off. I sometimes call them gray herons. It looks like both terms are used, although the formal and proper name is Great Blue Heron.

A mother eagle and one kid are in the same area. Mom was on the shore when we came around the promontory. She flew up to the tree where the kid was and both took off from there to somewhere inland.

Two of the common terns fly by.  Their distinctive split tails make identificatione easy.  Perched out in the water on a piece of driftwood is a cormorant with wings spread for drying. 

A few pockets of pollen were in the water along the shore before the promontory, but after the promontory there was a foot-wide ribbon of a couple hundred yards, so the pollen problem is still pretty bad. Ground up leaves and other vegetation that looks like tea leaves is found along the shore, too. The beach along the pollen stretch is marked with a series of lines from the high tide mark to the water line made from the river tea leaves as the retreating tide surges from gusts of wind. The result looks like growth rings. The same marks are present without the tea leaves in other areas, but not as apparent.

Two types of fossilized coral appear here, too. One looks like natural sponge and is about the same color. The other looks like draped fabric that’s petrified. When parts wear away pockets are exposed that are big enough to stick a finger inside. The color is the same as the sponge type. It may be they are the same and the sponge is left after enough of the draped part erodes away. The sponge type is more prevalent, but both seem to be limited to a small area in this less populated area.

We are almost ready to leave the beach and discover a few bare foot prints in the dry sand well back from the high tide mark. These look to be big enough for an adult; another adventurous person. —-

 

Walking the Beach #25 (Apr 07)

 We had an inch of rain overnight and it cleared the air this morning. It’s in the fifty’s and damp with no breeze. A tornado watch is in effect for another hour, but the overcast is breaking up as predicted, so any tornadoes are outside our neighborhood.

The tide is on the high side, but not so as to be an obstacle. Wave action is very lazy, slowly sloshing ashore ahead of us, then behind and adjacent as we walk. The water still has a slight dappled appearance, that hammered silver look, but without the sun shining.

We spot a young gray heron just as we reach the beach. It’s most tolerant of our approach and doesn’t fly off until we are within fifty feet and then just a short ways off. Another shows up around the big promontory and is more skittish about our presence.

Several young eagles are cruising the sky. We spook a third one from the top of a tall tree also past the big promontory. Two kingfishers are back in the same area and leapfrog over us going and coming.

Someone is working on the fancy pier when we return. It looks like preparation is being made to put a roof over the newly erected second boat lift. The extension ladder on the low damaged pier walkway hasn’t been moved since it appeared a few days ago. The fancy pier wins the prize again for the most activity.

The pull up tree is damp and easier to grasp while exercising. I manage six pretty good repetitions, the max so far.

The rain helped further blur the many prints in the dray areas of the beach, but little else. The wind that blew all day yesterday failed to blow any interesting debris ashore.

Two seagull type birds, I later heard are common terns, perform a midair squabble for a few minutes over the water when Izzy and I are most of the way back. Seabirds around here don’t generally fight. These have a peculiar split tail that looks like one end of a skate egg case (sorry, but they do and you’ll just have to Google the egg cases or look up the common tern).

No oyster boats a all today despite the calm weather. No contrails, either, but cloud cover blocks any that may exist. Two layers of clouds are shifting about. A lower, fast moving layer is dark without back lighting, while the upper layer appears fluffy and white with blue patches between.

The air is very clear due to the rain. However, at one place a collection of pollen is visible in the water along the water line. —-

Walking the Beach #24 (Apr 07)

 It’s blustery today, a continuation of yesterday and part of a northeaster predicted to bring some badly needed rain later on. The official wind speed is thirteen MPH, but it seems higher. Waves are rolling straight into shore, kind of strange for a river you’d think. They’re pushing the low tide up the beach to a mid-tide position. Larger waves also break up the reflected sunlight. They reduce the glare and give the light a muted quality as if it is being reflected off hammered silver. Part of this may be due to clouds covering part of the sky and yesterday’s haze that is still present.

Noise from wind through the trees and wave action mask most other sounds. A large commercial airlines passes and can barely being heard. Strangely, the sound of a small single engine propeller plane, high overhead, can be heard, too. Only one contrail is ever visible.

Two oyster boats are out, in line with the lighthouse base. They’re spaced a half mile apart, and obviously aren’t deterred by larger waves.

Izzy and I can make it down and back past the various obstacles despite the wave action.

A couple buzzards seem to enjoy the weather, flying about as if the air isn’t moving. One seabird with long and rather skinny wings skims above the water and also handles the wind effortlessly. I think it’s an albatross. The wings are very different from seagulls, eagles, vultures and ducks. The blue heron has a similar long wingspan, but huskier looking.

Beach sand markings capture my eye today. Footprints in dry sand start off looking blurry and become more so with time. These entirely cover many areas giving the surface a churned look. Marks in wet sand are well defined and detailed, with little competition, but last only until the next tide.

Marks in sand are of several categories. Most are from people and dogs. A smaller number come from birds, mostly small ones mixed with those of an occasional blue heron. Small bird tracks disappear in dry sand, but blue heron feet are large enough to persist. They’re easy to identify, having three toes, each about three inches long that point forward, and one to the rear, also three inches long.

Water marks are another category. Rain drops leave a dappled pattern. Tidal movement leaves lines and mounds, including the dividing line between wet and dry. Wet sand slung onto dry has a unique look. It’s seen along the wet-dry divide where wind-whipped globs of water-churned sand blow onto a dry area. A wet dog coated with sand produces a similar look when it shakes itself over a dry area.

A last type mark is left by any long and lightweight piece of material with one end anchored that’s moved back and forth carving a circular pattern. If not anchored, it can more crablike across sand leaving strange regular tracks that make no sense unless the material is seen at one end. —-

Walking the Beach #23 (Apr 07)

We have a little warmer day today, though still pretty cool. The tide is at low level exposing some of the mud flats. The sky is cloud free, but hazy with a couple very small contrails. Two oyster boats are working near the lighthouse base.

It feels like no breeze on the way down although some can be seen moving what leaves are out on trees up on the bank. However, on the way back it feels like a steady twenty MPH wind. There was probably a shift while we were around the promontory and I couldn’t feel it until we rounded the point on the way back. No sound from the boats could be heard and just a little from the waves on the way out; only wind noise on the return, of course.

The four eagles are still hanging around, moving between trees and on down the riverbank as we approach. Mom flys out and lands on a branch from a storm-displaced tree on the tidal flats a hundred yards out. At the same time a small oyster boat with one person heads towards us and stops a little ways from the eagle which tolerates this. The waterman shovels something that sounds like oyster shells out of the boat bottom into the river. This lasts about ten minutes and he heads back out, strange behavior unless he is seeding an oyster bed.

I started filming a movie with the camera from the halfway point up to the promontory point with some running commentary. The result is usable but a little grainy and while the small oyster boat with nearby perching eagle are covered, they can only be seen as unidentifiable specs.

During the filming process two kingfishers appear. They’re too small to show in the movie and their sounds are not picked up by the camera. They were not around on the first leg, so must have been inland or followed us down rather than our previous experience of coming upon them and being leapfrogged.

The cold weather of several days past was bad enough to do some damage to newer growth, but not too much. —-

Walking the BEach #22 (Apr 07)

There’s ice on the outside dog water bowl, again, this morning and patches of frost on the lawn. Izzy and I are out an hour earlier than usual because of some errands today so it’s a little cooler for this walk.

A high, thin cloud cover allows some sun to get through and the sun has a large halo from high altitude ice crystals. Fortunately the air is pretty still, so no wind chill to worry about.

The tide is out and wavelets reaching the beach are small, rolling in about one a second. Still they generate most of the background noise.

Only one fishing boat is visible. It’s the large size with several boom arms clustered around the cargo area. It moves down river and out of sight, engine sounds drifting in to us over the river. It shows up later, after our walk, probably just be returning from work elsewhere. By the time we reach the half way point two of the regular oyster boats have taken up their stations near the lighthouse base.

Jet noise and at least one prop-driven airplane can be heard, but contrails never appear. Towards the end of our walk a small single-engine plane crosses high overhead.

On the way down we spook a lone juvenile eagle near the fancy pier. It moves a short distance to a tree where another bird is visible. A lot of eagle talk ensues. Two juveniles then fly off, but another form is still visible. As we get closer a third juvenile and then an adult eagle leave the three and head downstream along the riverbank. Mom appears to still have a brood she is teaching or trying to disperse.

Going and coming I look for the thick oyster shell fossils and note there are no concentrations of them. There’s perhaps a few dozen strewn along much of the mile we cover. Also, the thick layers of gray clay with a dense mixture of fossils visible at a couple places are made up mostly of the gray Chesapecten jeffersonius fossils and another white, fairly smooth and oval-shaped clam shell. A quick look at one area turns up just one small oyster shell. The small conical shells I found at another place were mixed with a brown soil, sand and mixed crushed shells. They are present in the gray clay, too, but only rarely.

Near the waterline where we first join the beach are two of the bullet-shaped Styrofoam floats on top of the water. They look like those attached to oyster bed markers, but appear to mark crab pots and will almost be left dry at low-low tide. If they’re crab pots, they must be from last year as this is not crab season. Our lowest tide should occur in a couple weeks and the reason for the floats may become visible then. —-

Walking the Beach #21 (Apr 07)

 The temperature is in the 40’s today and really windy, but folks are out on the beach with their dogs, so we head back for the alternate, access, road. No oyster boats, nor contrails, again. A two-engine Navy plane slowly passes by downriver and that’s it.

Izzy decides he’d had enough after the short beach walk, so I’m alone for this walk. One of the neighbors with a tractor has a blade he uses to smooth the bumps and fill in the potholes which he did yesterday so today walking is a little rougher. Despite the colder temperature there are several sets of footprints in the gravel where others have passed.

It’s windy on the access road, too.

Later in the day we’re interrupted by a neighbor at the door asking us to dial 911 because her husband is kayaking out to rescue someone in the river who dumped himself into the water. We make the call and stay on the line while heading out to the river to see the kayaker with someone in tow. I’d earlier noticed in passing someone in a small boat with an outboard engine making hard turns while towing what looked like a boogie board. It’s the same person. We learn the boat was overpowered and a gust of wind caught and flipped it during one of the turns. The driver was not wearing a kill cord to the engine when dumped, so the boat kept going, but must have stalled out because it was a couple hundred yards away.

The victim stood as soon as the kayaker reached shallower water and was able to walk on in. He was a guy in his 50’s and the kayaker yelled that everything was OK, to cancel the 911 call. Meanwhile another boat had approached and the kayaker directed it to recover the loose boat. I didn’t have any other details although the 911 dispatcher asked if there was a name or boat number available.

The boater was lucky. Water temperature is in the 40’s and the chill factor is twenty-five times greater than in air so even a good swimmer can succumb close to shore or in a dry suit. This man was in work clothes and very embarrased.

Over the next couple hours we received several more calls from various agencies asking for more details. That’s the problem with the messenger not being involved. —-