Walking the Beach #72 (Jun 07)

It’s going to be hotter today than yesterday, so we are out even earlier which is about right, plus there’s a bit more breeze this morning. The tide is low. It’s clear and still hazy, no contrails, one fishing vessel and sun is pretty low in the sky but you can still feel the heat.

Something finally mauled over the dead water moccasin. It looks like only some rolled up skin is left, not that it’s worth investigating.

One learns how good an observer you are doing this bloging when you can revisit places and see things previously described. The pilings by the low damaged pier I thought had been hauled off fact appear to have been installed to one side of the end making a T-shaped platform. Then there are the stringers that run down the pilings, which I said were inside the posts, are actually spaced between the posts to provide a nailing surface for the walkway about every eighteen inches.  They are not just attached to the insides of the posts. Also, the outsides of the posts are notched so the outside stringers sit on a shoulder and aren’t just attached to a flat surface.

The walkway planks are all installed out to the end, over a hundred or hundred fifty feet of damaged walkway. While we are in the official hurricane season and are due for more than average number of the severe types, thus far the weather has been just the contrary to wet and windy. I don’t know which would be better, drought or hurricanes, if you had to choose.

The gopher that left tracks in the sand seems to have left the area, one way or another.  Only old tracks are still around, those that haven’t been erased.

Another observation snafu: the osprey carcass still has both feet. They had drawn up under the body for some reason. It had been flipped over this time around and the feet are visible.

A live osprey does a little fishing nearby on our return lap. The tree-bound heron near the turnaround point makes it’s usual launch as we approach that area.

The otter’s sand box is still at the turnaround point. It had been moved about ten feet in amongst some downed tree branches that block further progress, the reason for this being the turnaround spot.

Clay chunks that fall from the bank slowly break apart as they dry. I wondered if beginning cracks or uncracked chunks would remain intact if placed in a pool of water. They don’t. The cracked ones continue to disintegrate. More solid pieces slowly soften. So if a piece containing lots of fossils is to be preserved to show at a school or museum, there is a time limit involved and wrapping it in plastic or placing it in a water-filled bucket won’t help much….

Walking the Beach #71 (Jun 07)

 Hot and humid weather is here. At 7 AM with a slight breeze, wearing a t-shirt, you can be pretty sweaty after a short beach walk. Cloud cover is thin and a humid haze helps block direct sunlight, which helps, but Izzy still starts panting shortly after we start.

A few fresh deer tracks from a lone deer are along the waterline. More show up at several places over the entire distance we cover. Could be the same critter.

The small sink hole in sand by the first jetty has been filled in. I just noticed the change, but don’t recall seeing it for a couple weeks.

A decapitated water moccasin is close to the waterline at the fancy pier. It has been there several days and looks like someone chopped or shot off the head. Nothing has touched it, yet, in contrast with fast attacks by vultures on any stranded fish. In that vein the osprey carcass past the promontory had been gutted and stripped to the breastbone only a couple days after washing up. The wings and head are untouched. The legs with impressive talons are also gone, which may be by human hand.

Otter tracks appear in several places and may be along much of the beach toward the less trafficked area. I have trouble distinguishing otter from dog. They are much alike to me, but I think the otter prints lack toenail marks.

The place at the turnaround point that had been used as a sandbox by the otter went untouched for a couple weeks. I thought it had left the area until today when the usual spot showed some disturbance.

The tide is low so beach obstacles were easy to skirt. Only a couple of crabbers are out today, but no boats have been around on several days.

Contrails are also few these hot, humid days. This morning a couple jet liners crossed over the river on their way from the local airport.

Bird life is greatly reduced the last few days, too.  Today typically one young eagle appears as we start our walk.  Close to the mid point a lone heron launches from a tree top.  No kingfishers and only a few starlings can be seen.  Even fewer fish can be seen jumping in the warmer river water which is about 80 degrees.

The low damaged pier is now under construction. New two-by-sixes now connect 25 pilings spaced about eight feet apart. These are what the planks are attached to, so they connect pilings on each side plus running along the inside and outside of each pile. That’s a lot of expensive lumber.

The used pilings that were in the water, then pulled up on the beach are now gone. It doesn’t look like they were used on this pier, so may have been carted off for use elsewhere.

Pilings or piles is a strange name for these wooden posts, but if you look up the word in the dictionary, this same term applies to batteries, nuclear reactors and part of a rug. No wonder English is such a tough language.

I’ve started doing slow pull-ups on the pull-up tree, taking thirty seconds for each one. I can now do seven of the usual version, but barely two of the slow ones. Doing fewer repetitions causes less joint irritation, but the difficulty and benefit seems to be equal.

We had a breeze going down the beach, but not coming back, just the opposite of what you want. Off the beach it’s shady and more of a breeze seems to be available and it’s appreciated…

Walking the Beach #70 (Jun 07)

Today is a repeat of yesterday; same mid-tide, light breeze, cool but warming under the sun, a couple clouds, no airplane traffic and a few boats, including the small one with the guy using oyster tongs. Tidal action has smoothed out the ‘fingers’ of coarser sand that covered much of the beach for a few days.

Sound is carrying further today. I can hear the two guys talking in the small oyster boat that looks to be a half mile off. A large, typical, oyster boat with loud motor comes into the river from above the guys in the small boat. It heads downstream and either mid-river or towards the opposite shore, easily heard for a good twenty minutes. About the time it fades from hearing the sound of some emergency vehicle can be heard probably on the closest main road on this side of the river, which is at least a half mile away once you get up a thirty foot bank and through some woods.

Still no action at the damaged low pier. More treated 2×6 lumber may have been deposited. It looks like fifty or sixty boards.

The gopher tunnels look the same with no new traffic.   One eagle erupts from a tree as we walk by.  A heron leaves another tree far down the bank also due to our approach.  Another osprey, probably, cruises by out over the water.  No kingfishers have been around for at least a week. 

The dead raptor, an osprey, it turns out, was probably the victim of entanglement. Its talons were ensnared by some nylon rope, about four or five feet in a loose ball, some of it unraveling. It looks like the osprey grabbed it with both feet, couldn’t release it or free either foot, so it was hobbled. A few loose strands were around both ankles. It was easier to cut this off than find a way to slip it off. Had the osprey been alive it would have been a difficult process to free without injury to person or bird. Photos of all this and the tangle of rope were provided a local wildlife expert for training.

I’ve been examining the fossil-bearing strata along the way and find a rare exposed piece of fossilized whale bone at the base of the bank right behind the pull-up tree. It’s about a foot long and sticks out an inch. It’s not mine to just dig out, but I can keep an eye on it in case it eventually washes out into the public part of the river. The exposed part could be most of the piece, or tip of the iceberg, so it’ll be interesting to see what develops. Bank erosion only occurs during stormy weather and hopefully it won’t disappear entirely during such bad weather.

A medium-sized dragon fly landed in my lap on the way back and decided to stay there the rest of the way back, climbing on up to my chest by the time we leave the beach. It finally climbed onto an offered thumb and perched there a minute before taking off…

Walking the Beach #69 (Jun 07)

 

 

It’s nice and cool today with low humidity. The haze is gone and clouds, too. Rain did come yesterday, but very little and the ground shows no effect.

A comfortable breeze follows us down and back up the beach. It’s probably the cause of increased wave action that has filled yesterday’s void with slowly rolling waves breaking with irregularity.

Two crabbers work their way across the bay, following different tracks, one constantly moving and the other traveling in slow hops. A smaller boat is manned by two people, guys I presume, one of whom is using oyster tongs. The boat has been in place each morning a little ways upstream and a few hundred yards offshore. I’d thought it was anchored and unmanned until binoculars showed the men. The boat is half the length and width of the usual oyster boat and lacks a superstructure.

More lumber, the big stuff – 2 x 6’s ten or twelve feet long — is piled on the bank near the low damaged pier. No work has been done. The pile-driver looks unused. When work does start we may have to stay away for the few days until it’s done.

The sky is clear of any past or present air traffic. One jet liner passes overhead halfway through the walk, heading out of the area, just barely visible and without a contrail.

Izzy draws my attention to a dead falcon on the beach just past the promontory. It looks full grown, bedraggled from being in the water and lying face down with wings spread and head turned to the side. It’s eye is open and clear like it might arise at any moment, but the body condition and being half buried in sand says otherwise. Death is common on the river, for crabs, for fish, turtles, deer, dogs, and tons of shellfish. The falcon is just more striking than crushed shells. It can also be more smelly.

The mole or gopher that was working on the beach yesterday had been at it again. The trails are longer like it is bumping against the bank as it works along the beach. Still no tracks in the sand where the mounds start or stop.

The breeze brings the scent of something nice on the way back. It turns out to come from a small mimosa tree that has slipped down the bank with some attached soil to continue its life until carried away by some storm. The flowers on this version are pink. I’ve never noticed a scent from them before. They are very nice..

Walking the Beach #68 (Jun 07)

Yesterday’s haze is still with us and now it’s overcast with a promise of rain. The tide remains low and no waves at all. It’s strangely quiet, too, despite plentiful background sounds – birds, crickets, what may be road noise from across the river and a jet liner leaving the area. It must be the absence of all wind; it is very still. And cool, but still humid.

A very persistent May fly had to be killed or it was going to have a piece of me. Later a couple more were just as bad. They can bite through a tee shirt and you definitely know when they are doing it. This morning I wore a baseball cap with no fly trap on the back, too.

A half dozen used pilings are grouped at the water line by the low damaged pier. The work boat, on second look, does look like it has a pile driving weight or ram. The boat doesn’t look like it has been moved. The pilings may have been pulled up from elsewhere and brought in. They have been used, but are not worn or very old. Other wood is on the beach and two folded pieces of boat lift struts, each with a motor attached, are lying on the undamaged part of the pier.

Three working boats are moving about a half mile or more from the shore. One heron flies off downstream, then back up as we progress. A raptor perching on a river marker and flying about is making the characteristic raptor squawk that sounds like a canary on steroids. An eagle lifts off from the tree tops near our turnaround point, a daily occurrence, now.

As we approach the turnaround point a big animal crashes away out of brush half way up a sloped section of bank. It’s most likely a deer, probably the one that has left tracks on the beach in this area.

Near the promontory a couple short mole-like tunnel mounds and some holes are evident in the sand close to the bank. The marks are about five feet long. No tracks are visible around them and nothing shows on the raw earth of the bank face, so where the animal came from and went doesn’t show.

Most of the beach that’s being shaped by normal tides is now developing a regular pattern of spaced bands of very coarse sand that’s light colored alternating with fine sand that’s darker. Each band is about a foot wide and runs from two to five feet long.

A small critter I call the beach cockroach is now appearing around pilings and rubble. They are actually marine isopods and our largest are about an inch and a half long. They appear in colonies up to a couple hundred that duck for cover whenever people appear, so they are usually seen from a distance as rapidly moving somethings with camouflage colors….

 

Walking the Beach #67 (Jun 07)

 

It’s going to be the hottest day this year and even very early it’s warm and hazy from the humidity. The sky is clear except for a small wispy cloud and sun is up but the haze blocks much of the sun’s heat, which is helpful since we’ve no breeze. Tide is low and water is slowly lapping at the shore, more like a river should be than the usual wave action.

The onion patch is less visible. Kudzu tendrils around toppled flowering heads wrapping themselves around ground vines stitching the mounds in place. The flowering heads seem to be doing fine under the greenery despite the limited sunlight. A single sunflower has rooted from a seed dropped by a bird on the bare soil close to the base of a vertical piece of bank. A ten-inch blossom grew from the poor soil with little water and only the baking sunlight. Smart bird!

The low damaged pier now has a small pile-driving boat parked next to the end. It looks like repairs may be planned. I call it a pile-driver, but the vertical device on the back end may be just to upend piles . They can be set in place by washing a hole under the bottom so they sink into the riverbed from their own weight. Besides the boat looks too small to handle the pile-driving weight. I didn’t think any pilings were missing or damaged, just the connections and planks, so an addition may be in order.

Two peregrine falcons are fishing near the shore, hovering and diving periodically to catch fish in the shallows. Our passage doesn’t bother them. Two eagles and two herons are near the turnaround point, sort of permanent residents for the summer it appears.

Deer tracks appear in two places on the beach, widely separated, and I would think two of them are involved.  Bare footprints have also shown up.  This time it looks like some are adult and some are child sized.

No more dead fish have appeared and only a couple small crabs have washed up. The dragonflies are more numerous and varied, but not as plentiful as last year; not yet anyway. A few mosquitoes have appeared, so the dragonflies are timely.

Two working boats are out.  One has a load of black crab traps piled several feet high and slowly travels from downstream close in to shore towards the river center a couple miles upstream.  He must be placing traps, but it’s not obvious…

Walking the Beach #66 (Jun 07)

It’s Sunday and a short beach walk day. The weather is heating up. It’s cool enough this morning, but haze from high humidity already shows, obscuring the far bank and other more distant objects. No clouds are about nor planes or contrails, old or new, for the moment. A couple boats have shown up, but may be fishermen in pleasure craft.

The beach shows little traffic after the recent few days of smoothing tides. Today there’s no breeze for the moment no any wave action, so it’s very quiet. Even bird life is absent along the riverbank.

One fossilized oyster shell had a very high count of growth rings. It looks to be about 42 to me. Here it is if you want to count.

We use the main access road to meet our distance goal and pick raspberries on the way back. The haul this time is 233. That’s probably the peak number available for such a small area, about fifty feet along the road.

Chiggers are now a problem. Two of them already left their mark from either the last picking day or other work around unmown areas of our yard. Repellent on my shoes, socks and cuffs along with taping closed the cuffs is good protection, but takes time and a fair amount of tape. I’ll know in a day or so if the protection worked this time.

The cool air of the morning intensifies natural scents.  Mostly its the smell of composting soil and moist earth.  All the scented flowers have gone.  Magnolia blossoms are out, but have no scent.  For the summer all we’ll have now is the result of farming from mown crops and tilled soil….

Walking the Beach #65 (Jun07)

Still overcast and cool, but the high tides have begun to retreat a little so we can get almost all the way to the turn around point before coming back. We’ve had windy weather for several days. Wind driven tides have left the beach very flat; at an incline, but flat rather than corrugated and convoluted. Water has eaten away one large clump of fallen soil we had to climb over at high tide. Now there’s still a narrow path Izzy can transverse, but I can’t use it. Instead I wade through a small amount of brush that was and pretty much still is rooted in the dirt, but lying on it’s side.

A single May fly decides I’m his meal or he’s dead and devotes him or herself to that end just as we start down the beach and keeps at it for a good hundred yards.  I don’t get him and he misses his meal and he is elsewhere on the return leg. 

Dead fish remnants have diminished, but can still be smelled at a few places and tell us where to look if we’re interested in the source; a head most of the time. A couple places in the sand show vulture scrabble marks where they’ve been feeding.

The turtles seen some days past did not remain or shift location.

A heron launches from a high tree top as we near the turnaround spot and is quickly followed by a hawk, a strange couple. Then I see a second heron on the beach below the launch spot. This looks like the heron pair that claimed this area. One eagle is in the dead cyprus tree by the low damaged tree and flies away as we get close.

The aggressive water and wind activity brought a few more remnants ashore. A solid white construction hard hat in good condition, one of those 52 or 54 ounce insulated big drink containers with a spill-proof top, and a new two-colored oyster-bed buoy are most notable. The hat has a number, 32, on the back,and a name, Tyler on the front. I haul all three of these back to a collection point where we enter the beach. Someone scoops up the pile periodically and hauls it off to the dump.

The part of the bank with the small onion field is slowly submerging in an expanding kudzu blanket. Of the hundred stalks only about twenty are still visible. The others have toppled when the enveloping vine added too much weight, but are still visible and viable when the vines are shifted.

Two working boats are patrolling about off shore. What they are doing can’t be seen with the naked eye.

Yesterday the tide was higher and forced us to turn back sooner, so we also walked the access road where we picked more raspberries. This was the second day to pick and about 125 were available. A few days earlier at the first harvest only about 50 were ripe, so the crop is ‘burgening’….

Walking the Beach #64 (Jun07)

 

We’re a little earlier than normal, about 6:30AM, and it’s a cooler day with some overcast. No breeze, but the tide is high, again, and sloshing against the shore. It’s a dull gray day that’s accentuated by the many bright, sunny days that preceded it.

Only two working boats are out, initially. A third comes along shortly. All three are moving about more than the oyster boats, which are pretty stationary.

Two dead turtles are on the beach. One is saucer-sized and the other a little larger. Both are the same type, solid color and round tops. I don’t think they are snappers, but can’t do a better identification. A good web site is thttp://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?guide=Turtles but none of the images seem to match. I made photos and will use them to do more research. The smaller was just the shell. The larger was stretched out with head and feet extended. If you wonder if turtles die with legs in or out, it appears it’s legs-out.

More dead fish have washed up along the beach. Some are pretty decayed and others look fresh. They vary in size from a half pound up to a couple. Vultures are working on some of these and fly off at our approach. The marks they make in the sand around such food seems distinctive and different from several spots seen previously and associated with raptors eating their prey.

Once again we don’t make it all the way to the halfway mark due to high water. On the way back I pick up a wrinkled sheet of cemented fossils about a half inch thick and almost two feet in area. Various pieces of this stuff are found in one small area. Other areas have irregular chunks rather than layers. It’s a nice size, but about fifteen pounds. I’d found it on another day but just laid it on top of a boulder-size piece on the beach, something we all seem to do based on items left like markers on the top of driftwood, rocks, piers and boat ramps. The cool weather and shorter walk seemed like a good time to bring it on home. It’s drab looking, as is all this stuff, but close examination reveals small fossil shells that are almost whole and many pieces of others all bound together. Although heavy and hard the material will shatter if dropped, so a little care is needed to preserve it….

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Walking the Beach #63 (Jun 07)

The tide peaked and is just starting back down. We get much of the way down the beach, but it becomes too troublesome, climbing over and through debris that we can normally by pass, so we don’t make it all the way.

A neighbor tells me an otter sometimes swims along the beach early in the morning. We discuss the scat or poop in the sand at our turnaround point that had pieces of shell mixed in and agree it is from this otter. That spot on the beach does look like what a cat does in a litter box, too, and footprints don’t normally show where cats, or dogs, scratch up the surface after doing their business.

Only one boat, either an oyster or crab boat appears. A half dozen large fish skeletons litter the beach, including the one that left such a stink as we approached a couple weeks back. No odors are obvious from any of these.

The only birds out are three herons. One is near our entry onto the beach and a pair are visible down the beach near the promontory point. These two stay well away from us and look to be a pair that I’ve seen before.

A dead, bare — truly bald — cyprus tree next to the low damaged pier would be surrounded by water with this tide except for sand accumulating behind it. Coarse tall grass, a little like Johnson grass, grows in this area and is now getting tall and dense enough that you have to wade through it. It’s a concern because of snakes. It’s also near a small section of rock-armored bank where a large snake trail had appeared in the sand a few days past.

The kudzu is slowly submerging the blooming onion patch, climbing the stalks and toppling them one by one. Meanwhile, though, the blossoming heads are maturing. Many are now softball sized . The hundreds of tiny flowers are much loved by small butterflies, various bees and other bugs.

No lizards or snakes have been around the burned bald cyprus just off our beach entry point. Some weeds in this area have been chemically treated, it appears, as they have all turned brown. The chemicals may have acted as a repellent.

A crop of black dragonflies has appeared around the small creek that flows through the narrow tongue of wetland we have to cross over. These are varied in appearance. Some are all black with a small white spot near the tip of one wing. Some have cobalt blue bodies and other are kelly green. Lighting may play a part in these color differences, but I can’t tell, yet. Several parts of a dead one were resting on two leaves and a daddy-long-legs spider on a lower leaf appeared to be gnawing on the head. I’ve never before seen this spider with any prey.

We also went up the main access road to make up for missed distance on the beach. Tall grass along the sides has now been cut by one of the neighbors with a tractor-pulled cutter called a bush hog. The cutting is timely because raspberries are beginning to ripen. I picked about a half cup as our first harvest.

Magnolia trees in the area including one along this road are now opening their huge white blossoms. They produce no scent, but attract a small following of bees and bugs. And speaking of bugs, the May flies are common most days. My cap-mounted fly trap is a great success, especially when they are numerous. I tried wrapping an old-fashioned fly strip around the hat. It only caught one fly over three days during which a number of flies made many attacks. So, back to the more expensive version….