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 #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 #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 #61 (Jun 07)

 It’s warm even early in the morning today, but comfortable. We had a thunderstorm last night. Sandy areas that were dry are rain spattered from riverbank to high tide limit, then smooth down to the waterline; low tide at the moment. The air is still enough that the river surface is level. Further out it has the same rain spattered look from agitating bursts of air.

Much of the beach touched by tidal action today is covered with ripples, six-pack abs everywhere. And the surface has a wavy appearance.

Riverbanks previously covered with mats of gray kudzu vines are now green, the leaves having slowly emerged until the color is intense enough to catch your eye. The embedded patch of onions close to the beach have blossomed. Baseball-sized balls tightly packed with small, light-blue flowers sit atop each stalk.

The sand pit that formed on the high upriver side of the first jetty has been stable. It filled in once, but has not changed for several weeks. Sometimes as we pass over it quick movement can be seen from some critter ducking into cover as we pass by.

The storm brought ashore a ten or twelve foot piece of four inch PVC pipe, capped on each end and a rusted eye bolt in one that had broken. Most of it was black from being under water. The upper end was painted tan and had a large yellow J painted near the top. It’s an oyster bed marker. Further down the beach a twelve foot piece of bamboo had washed ashore. One end had been leafy and it looks just like a number of oyster bed markers used in this part of the river. No attachment hardware was on the bottom to show how it had been attached to the riverbed.

A couple oyster boats are out in their usual place. In addition a single boat is working pretty close to shore further down stream. It was there yesterday, too, a smaller boat manned by one guy rather than two or three in the larger versions.

Some sort of engine noise can be heard most mornings. It may be the oyster boats, heavy equipment ashore somewhere, traffic on nearby roads, passing aircraft , all mixed together or alone, but only noticeable if you think about it. It’s missing this morning.

Work has been done to a jetty close to the fancy pier. Two courses of large concrete blocks start at the bank out about thirty feet. Beyond that pieces of broken concrete have been piled out another thirty feet. The last couple weekends landscape blocks have been stacked atop the broken concrete raising the height several feet. It looks good, but may not stand up to heavy wave action in a storm. A good sized driftwood limb was thrown over this work during the night.

No contrails are visible this morning, active with attached planes, or left from their previous passage. Two jet liners can be seen and heard as we walk. They are high enough to be barely visible, but too low to make a contrail. They are heading away from our airport area.

The tree we crawl under at the promontory has company this morning. A forty foot maple at the edge of the bank thirty feet above has snapped off about five feet above the ground and toppled headfirst down the bank next to our tree. The crown isn’t very bushy and rests against the bank with the trunk lying straight up the bank. The tree size at the break looks to be at least a foot and a half across.

A short ways past this obstacle a twenty-foot-wide bank of climbing roses are in bloom. They drape over the top of the bank and hang halfway down, a good fifteen feet. It looks like they were planted along the top, then grew over the edge while the edge eroded away.

Past this point we enter the uninhabited part of the beach where no houses are obvious. It’s about half the distance we cover. The warm weather and water is now causing rocks and debris covered the tidal action that were previously barren to now become coated with green algae.

A large amount of brown organic matter has washed ashore near the waterline here. It looks like thirty or forty pounds of tea leaves have washed ashore

Few birds are out this morning until we arrive here. Then down the beach four eagles spring out from the trees and fly away from us. Suddenly an owl bursts out of the tree tops, apparently spooked by the eagle activity, and flies towards us along the tree line. It passes over without a sound and disappears back into the trees. If you were not watching, you’d never know it had passed. We hear owls and sometime see catch dim glimpses of them in the evening as large forms swooping through the trees. This is the first time I’ve ever seen one during the day.

Despite the early hour we still are quite warm by the time we get back……

Walking the Beach #52 (May 07)

We’ve a high, thin overcast today so it’s basically clear, with three visible contrails. An executive jet appears from the west heading east for the airport and soon a passenger jet does the same. A couple small propeller planes can be heard at different times and one sounds pretty close, but I can’t ever spot either one.

A slight breeze starts us on our way, but dies before long. It’s humid, hazy again, and in the mid seventies so Izzy and I are both pretty warm by the time we get back. No biting flies which is good, but they plague me later in the yard once I work up a sweat. The tide is low and water so quiet the birds in the trees and dripping water along from places on the bank face are easily heard.

One eagle launches from nearby as we reach the beach and it heads downstream to a new perch atop a tree at the edge of the river bank. Our lone Blue Heron is sitting on the roof of the fancy pier, like a hood ornament. It flys off, too, as we approach. I forget the eagle until it noisily launches again from a tree directly above me.

Eight oyster boats are out. Three are grouped together near the lighthouse base and the rest are randomly scattered above and below.

The Blue Heron disappears for good, but on the way back an eagle is now perched on the fancy pier roof. Two are flying around over the river not far off and then a third launches from a tree on the bank above the fancy pier. The perched one joins those three and they all wheel about pretty close to the water at times. Two seem to be trying to do that airborne mating ritual of theirs, though almost in the water and finally one does end up there. It takes off within a minute and has no trouble getting airborne. Finally two of them head upstream and the other two downstream.

An increasing number of tracks, all bird except for Izzy and mine, are building up in the sand.   Many of the bird are from the tiny shore birds.  A group of eight are working the waterline when we return.  A few look like geese tracks though we’ve not seen the Canada Goose from several days back.  And some are from the Blue Heron which also leaves really big splashes of poop that are about six inches across.  Today we also have eight or nine dead crabs most of which were probably there yesterday.

A small piece of fossil or limestone appears at the waterline close to the halfway mark. It’s about six inches long, sort of a tan color, and looks like two parallel twigs have been dipped in batter and fried, but the broken ends show the material to be solid. It must have been part of a larger limestone formation made by flowing water.

I brought a small screwdriver along today and work for a few minutes on the tube worm shell found yesterday near the beach exit. All but a quarter inch comes away from the clay leaving me with a piece just shy of three inches. Several other promising looking pieces are poking up from the clay in this area, so I work on another for a few minutes, then leave it for tomorrow. Sometimes rain and tidal action will do your work and you just have to monitor progress each day.—-

Walking the Beach #51 (May 07)

Fog again, but it’s high this morning; or you could call it a really low overcast. Looking across the river the space between clouds and river is brightly lit like the fog is thin or breaking to let the sun through.

This is a quick walk because there are errands to be done in town today, so we don’t dawdle much. A quick stop at the pull-up tree going and coming and another stop just where we access the beach, the location of the nice piece of a cone shell from yesterday. I look closely at the clay layers of fossils all along the way to see if the larger conical shell is present, but only the tiny ones are evident. Where the conical piece appeared there are also some of the longest tube worm shell pieces, but some gentle excavating is needed to retrieve any. I’ve no idea how long an entire tube would be. A Google check showed that they can be coiled in several shapes and three inches seems to be a typical length. Ours are straight. and the long ones that are still embedded in clay are about that length, three inches.

A Blue Heron is the only bird seen the whole way. It hops ahead of us a couple times along the water line, then disappears. Just as well because the sliding doors that cover my camera lens decided to stop working making photography impossible. This happened a week earlier, too. Discussion group gossip has it that a tiny piece of grit is the usual cause. Perhaps, but various types of agitation does nothing to fix the problem and sending these things in for repairs will cost almost the same as buying another camera. The doors are easily opened, so I super glue them open which works just fine. The carrying case will now be the lens cover unless the right sized simple plastic cap can be found.  I’ve repaired and dissasembled a half dozen digital cameras and have no chance at getting at the lens cover from the inside without screwing up the lens assembly.

No aircraft can be seen this morning, but three jets pass over and one turboprop. The first jet sounded lower than any I’ve heard. It came over the bank and I ducked a little at the first sound, expecting to see it under the low fog, but fortunately it was higher.

Tide is low and water sloshing along. No breeze and the air temperature must be about seventy because I’m starting to feel warm by the time we get back.  No biting flies reappear despite the warmer air and absence of wind.

One oyster boat can be seen on the way down. A second one appears by the time we returned and you can hear a distant engine sound the whole walk that was probably coming from them.

Some pink Morning Glory blossoms are present on top of the sand and close to a bank that’s sloped near the end or start of the walk.  No other vines are on the beach except for a few dormant runners from the kudzu all around the Morning Glory’s.  So far water hasn’t been driven this far ashore, but sometime this summer we will certainly have a storm that will clear away any vegetation that has dared to creep onto this flat .

That’s it for today.—-

Walking the Beach #50 (May 07)

 

 

Fog has arrived this morning; guess yesterday’s comment about San Francisco brought it on. At least it’s warmer, almost, but not quite t-shirt weather. A little breeze blows downstream and we feel it mostly on the way back. The tide is low and something new along the edge are white suds in patches all the way down to the turnaround point. It looks like a segmented six inch roll of Styrofoam. Maybe some factory or boat dumped a box of detergent upstream. Dunno. Also along the waterline in the water is a good mix of what looks like pulverized leaves which appear periodically, but without the foam, so that’s not the cause.

Visibility is about a hundred yards. Fog usually reduces the amount of sound one can hear. Still there are aircraft sounds — some jet and some motor — coming through, periodically. Also motor sounds, probably from boats, some soft and some louder. After one period of louder sounds, a minute or two later the wave size and sound showes a marked increased. The tide is low and waves are slopping ashore, faster and louder after the boat, but generally a soft slopping, enough so water dripping from bank brink trees and bank springs can be heard dripping.

An eagle perched in a tree near where we first reach the beach starts up on our approach and flys away. A blue heron on the beach does the same, but hops down the beach, repeatedly, before finally leapfrogging over us upstream.

This is the first morning some river smells could be detected and that was near the big promontory. It’s a distinct odor associated with warm water and lots of marine life, not one I’d recommend or desired if you’re trying to sell seafood, but not very strong and only for a few minutes.

On the beach in this area was a small spot of churned sand with some fish scales. A big bird flew off into the fog as we came around the promontory. It was probably the one that ended up perching on the dead tree near the low, damaged pier close to the promontory and when it flew off I could see that it was an eagle. So eagles are probably eating meals on the beach.

Close to the turnaround point an interesting piece of limestone, or coral, appears on the beach. It’s a quarter-inch thick and saucer sized. One side is rippled. The opposite (obverse) is smooth.

The oyster bed markers made of small branches with leaves now have brown leaves instead of green. Near one of them is a piling or post with only a few inches above the water and a bird is perched atop it, probably a cormorant, but the distance is great enough that bird type is just a guess.

Fog limits our vision so I focus more on the beach and bank, mainly looking for interesting fossils. Birds can be heard, too, up in the trees, but none are visible. Close to where we leave the beach I find the bottom of one of the thin conical fossil shells that’s really big. It’s about the size of my thumb compared with the quarter-inch size of the largest specimens previously found. Unfortunately as I slowly dig it out and it comes free only half of it is present. However, these large sizes do exist and now are something to look for. —-

Walking the Beach #36 (Apr 07)

Another warm day and similar tide to yesterday’s. A gentle breeze is coming up the river or from the south also like yesterday. Airborne haze is the heaviest we’ve seen this spring, consistent with the warmer temperature and limited air movement. Yesterday we had a nice heavy shower for perhaps a half hour and you’d expect the air to be clear today. The rain may have added moisture to the air, but the grayish haze is heavier towards the James River Bridge with its traffic than up river around the reserve fleet, so plain old air pollution seems a likely reason.

Where we start the walk is beside a tongue of land that’s populated with cypress trees and a small creek. Where the land meets the river is a tiny bank about, probably a foot and half high. The creek makes a noise as it drops over this ledge, which is audible for about fifty yards down the beach, making it the biggest source of sound other than our German Pointer pounding through the water. Other river noise is non-existent this morning.

Insect populations are on the rise. A few weeks ago a small scattering of black flies similar to the love bugs of Florida that cause a seasonal mess down there, were scooting about along the waterline staying close to the ground. Today they have been replaced by several types of flying ants which are swarming. We’ve had several of the tiny types in our house. Here on the beach are a few larger cousins. Some may be termites because all types come out this time of year.

It looks like seven oyster boats are out. They can be stacked throwing the count off by a couple, but seven seems accurate, and they are in the usual area just above the lighthouse base.

We flush one mature eagle from the trees on the way up, stop by the pull-up tree for some exercise going and coming, and see more aircraft than normal. Seven passenger flights fly over mostly outbound from the airport area. Two fly inbound. The outbound flights are at a much higher altitude by the time they reach us. One we don’t see sounds like a jet fighter from the louder engine. Contrails, in addition, number just two this morning. The sky is almost cloud free, but the haze overhead can obscure the smaller contrails, so two is a conservative count.

By the time we return Izzy is hot enough to finally walk a short ways in the water at the very edge. He even drinks a little of the river, so this is definitely the hottest day this year we’ve had on the beach. The pointer, though, spends all his time in the water and is perfectly comfortable.

Two raptors, either young eagles or falcons or hawks, are cruising over the river. One catches a fish that’s almost too big to carry, or not grasped very well, judging from the manner of flying. Then the second one dive bombs the first causing it to drop the fish and they tussle some in the air before the second flys off a ways. These two may be the same ones that have been hanging out around our house. I hear and see them during the day and they seem to travel as a pair.

No small shore birds accompany us today. The one I saw a couple days ago may have been a plover. It was on the waterline near us several times over several days.

The bodies of two young blue crabs and pieces of a third have washed ashore.  I expect this signals the beginning of the crab season.  A tiny live land crab showed up about a week ago, but it was probably from some nearby wetlands.  They don’t normally appear along the beach.—-

Walking the Beach #34 (Apr 07)

 It’s Sunday and I planned to just use the access road towards the highway, but Izzy wanted to immediately take the opposite direction, towards the last house in our neighborhood where the road ends at the beach. So we go that way through the woods, which is a nice segment. When we reach the beach the tide is pretty low allowing us to walk downriver by that route.

It’s a cloud-free day, very calm with no breeze and no boats on the water. It’s too cool to wear a short sleeved shirt at the start and just right by the time we finish. Three contrails are present in the sky.  The jet passenger liner we see about this time crosses the river towards the airport.

We make it about half way down the beach because no dogs are around, but turn around before there is time for them to arrive. The sinkhole in the sand by the one jetty is now about two feet across at the top, but only a foot deep, for now.

Had we made it to the usual turn around on the beach we would probably see a place where some animal has scratched around in the sand well back from the waterline and next to a fallen tree that has a root ball up on the bank about twenty feet high. I think raccoons or possums use the tree as a path to the beach where something is done in the sand. The disturbed area is a couple feet across and not deep.  No obvious paw prints can be seen to help tell what animal is responsible.

This area is where the large limestone chunks are found. The biggest gathering is at a place where a deep V is carved in the bank down to the beach with a bank height of some twenty feet. A small stream flows out of the notch and a large piece of soil is also lying on the beach made up mostly of the limestone material. Eight or nine separate large-to-medium sized limestone boulders are scattered about nearby. The largest is some eight feet square while the medium pieces are the size and basic shape of a car’s wheel (with tire). This material looks to be made entirely of one substance, the limestone. No shells or other stuff are embedded in it.

On up the beach a short ways are scattered a few more pieces of the same material, several of which are also large. Mixed in with this are some medium sized chunks of cemented shell material. The binding material may also be limestone. These seashell chunks increase in size near the big promontory, but I can’t detect a source or sources up the bank. It may be that loose soil is mixed in and washes away once chunks are on the beach. In addition, many small nodules in marble, golf ball and tennis ball sizes are scattered over much of the way along our path. Some are sharp-edged like the big chunks, but some are very rounded and appear to be made by the limestone accumulation process seen in caves.

Only a couple ducks are on the water or moving about above it. Haze in the air is increasing and that fits with the still air. It’s very quiet this morning with slow, small wavelets lapping against the shore.

 The pollen count is low so no accumulation shows along the waterline. The last high tides have not retreated from the ones that reached the bank, each leaving its own small ridge line when it retreated. —

Walking the Beach #32 (Apr 07)

The beach has washboard abs today. The last high tide reached the river bank again and during the process left ripples of sand along a strip from the top down about eight feet before smoothing out the rest of the way to the water.

We’re about mid tide at the moment with more debris evenly scattered across the smoothed and rippled sand than yesterday. It’s easier to look for interesting items in this nicely distributed display and a small piece of fossil whalebone shows up as soon as I start looking  after reaching the beach. This part of the beach produces the only whale fossil I’ve found, a distance about one hundred yards long. The piece is four inches long and split lengthwise. If intact it would be round and about two inches across. It’s stained a dark red from mineral iron. A little further on another a smaller piece appears, just a flat fragment a couple inches long and the same color.

Not long after we moved into this neighborhood a neighbor told us a whale skeleton lay in the water just offshore where I’ve now found several pieces of bone. A barely visible long, log-like thing in the water seemed to be what was suppose the skeleton. However, at low-low tide we could see the thing was actually just a piece of driftwood. Still these pieces and the story told by a guy several houses downstream about pulling a huge whale vertebrae out of the bank at the beach level, indicate there may be large pieces waiting to be discovered.

I’ve made a pretty close examination of the bank along the walk where very dense collections of fossils exist to see if anything other than very common mussel, oyster and clam shells are present. That’s all I’ve ever seen. Even the small conical shells are not there. Instead they show up in other areas of gray or blue clay with a very small distribution of tiny shells, including sections of tube worm shell. Sometimes a handful cluster of the conical shells mixed with the clay are present as the only exception. And coral, the branch type and usually snow white, though seen scattered very thinly down the entire beach, never shows up embedded in the bank. It must come from somewhere upstream.

The weather is excellent; just cool enough for a walk; clear except for several distant cirrus clouds; hardly any breeze, and even the pollen count is down.

Five oyster boats are strung out a short distance above the lighthouse station. A sixth is downstream past the station base, also a short distance. Upstream about a mile is a seventh, a small boat I can see through the binoculars, with one guy using oyster tongs. By the time we are on the return loop the boats around the lighthouse base have reached eight, but the one guy upstream is still slogging away on his own.

Only one tiny jet contrail appears during the entire time Izzy and I are on the beach. However, a lone jet fighter can be heard going over; never seen, though. Also, downstream a jet liner slowly passes over the river on its way to a landing. A lone helicopter appears from over our side of the river. A little later it looks like the same one appears from the same area, again. It happens again ten minutes later and I look more closely this time. It has Air Force markings and a long nose like a gunship, but doesn’t appear to be camouflaged. It heads for the opposite shore and never turns while it’s in sight. Then another appears and looks like the others, but too soon for the previous chopper to have circled around. There must be several strung out in a long line. Only one more takes this route.

Just a little bird activity, almost like yesterday. A raptor, perhaps a peregrine falcon, which inhabits this region and is about the right size, flys along the river out aways. We startle a blue heron from up in the trees (unusual) along the bank when we come around the promontory. A little tan shore bird leapfrogs along the waterline for a few minutes and two doves do the same along the beach about the same time.

A red rock about twice the size of my fist catches my eye near the water because of a depression that contains the imprint of a mussel shell. The rock bears no other shell marks and right next to it on the sand is a small piece of similar rock with a similar imprint, but raised. They fit together making this an interesting find to keep.

The high tides have been removing much loose soil from the new dislodged chunks of river bank. It doesn’t take long and may be indicative of how much the bank can be altered by a storm that batters the bank with waves for a day or two. —-