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.
