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 #48 (May 07)

We’re still in the midst of a northeastern. The wind is steady at 19 MPH with gusts twice that.

Much of the beach sand has been moved about. In some places many pieces of concrete debris buried under a foot of sand are now exposed. An old public boat ramp of broken six-inch thick concrete next to the low damaged pier that had been sitting atop the sand is now almost totally concealed. That jetty of two courses of stacked one-ton blocks where sand had been removed on the downriver side close to the bank turns out to have a lower course of blocks under the sand on up to the bank. Sand had washed back another three feet closer to the bank and exposed the extension of the bottom row.

Wind has smoothed the beach and in one spot sand is visibly blowing across the top of another jetty. A little is lifted high enough to hit me in the face. The wind is at our backs on the way down and I have to lean into it on the way back. We can get past the big tree, but water has been driven up to the bank beyond it, so we head back. The sink hole by one jetty is now full, but the sand around it is at the same level and the level on the low side is just a few inches lower.

The river is very muddy and whitecaps from yesterday never left. No oyster boats are out and the sky is almost clear so two passenger liners are visible as they head for the airport. A single contrail also shows high above. Only a couple birds are out, one sea bird and a vulture or two. Any haze has definitely been removed this morning.

I did bring a plastic bag today and fill it with about fifteen plastic juice, water and oil containers. These are left near the house while Izzy and I take the road to the beach at the end of the neighborhood and back. Just this short distance from the beach about 150 yards, there is no wind at ground level and only a few hints at tree tops, 50 feet and more above us. Still the distant wind or water can be heard and as we get closer a light breeze carries through woods with less undergrowth. Only one small dead branch has been blown onto the ground that I can see and it’s near our front door. The usually sprinkling of tiny dead twigs under two trees known to do this regular shedding are waiting to be picked up. Sycamore trees are especially bad about this.

I grab the beach trash on the way back and that’s it for today.—-

Walking the Beach #45 (May 07)

 A repeat of yesterday: Queen still here, cool, gray overcast, moderate-to-stiff breeze blowing. A passenger jet heads to the airport cross the river. Then a change: a passenger type jet heads straight up river. And it looks different, sort of plain, all gray, and no major markings. I don’t have the binoculars to see if any alphanumerics can be seen, but none are obvious to the naked eye. Interesting.

Five oyster boats are out.

The same number of vultures cruise about high over the main promontory in a loose formation. Eagle sounds can be heard in the trees when we reach the promontory, but none can be seen. A half dozen shore birds flit around over the water along the shore in front of us as we progress.

The cooler weather has driven the biting flies away for now.  They are less prevalent on the beach, but do appear.  A larger biter that I call a horse fly and looks like a big black fly can be especially bad for swimmers where you don’t notice them until they’ve started a painful bite.  They are not as common and aren’t associated with wooded areas like the May flies.

I forgot the darned plastic bag this morning for collecting trash and realized it just after reaching the beach. Fortunately a damaged one was available but had to be unknotted. That took up a good part of the walk but was done before the turnaround point. It held twenty-two containers and two more in my free hand. Four of these were quart oil bottles and one was a large Ivory detergent bottle. Another big piece of plastic that looked like a bag turned out to be a very durable cover for a case of thirty-two one-liter water bottles. Folks drink a lot of water out on the river, and use a lot oil, too.

I’ve not made an effort to pick up trash on beach walks and must do it now having told everyone they are present. Also I’m interested in how long it will take for another accumulation to form.

In the past Margo, my wife, and I routinely picked up broken glass because it can be a hazard to bare feet, animal and human. Some of the glass is pretty old, too, and can be attractive, so we sometimes see where little piles begin to accumulate on a pier or other protected location. Recently the amount of broken glass has declined, but pieces and full bottles still appear. Plastic may be a blessing in that regard.

On the West Coast one used to find colored glass balls that were fishing floats from Japan. Here we have plastic bottles, usually for water, some almost full and most with tops in place. Perhaps those that make it to sea make their way to Europe or South America. Or they may be accumulating in vast floating islands of debris along with coolers, etc., somewhere in the Atlantic, as has happened in the Pacific Ocean.

At the turnaround point newly disturbed sand reestablished the same setting seen previously where some critter has scrabbled around next to this fallen tree. Further back on the beach was another area with a somewhat similar appearance. It seems like some sort of tracks would show up, but they are not obvious.

The small sink hole on the high side of a concrete block jetty is still there, unchanged.  Something lives at the bottom where water sometimes washes in.  I think it’s a crab.

Just about the end of the beach segment an eagle flies over and two seagulls are dive bombing it. Another eagle is flying a short distance off. The seagulls break off shortly and the two eagles fly off. In silhouette eagles look like turkey vultures. The size and wing shape is similar. The vultures are bare headed, but at a thousand feet in the air it’s hard to distinguish with bare eyes. Grouping characteristics are somewhat different: eagles travel singly or in pairs while vultures are often in larger groups.—-

 

Walking the Beach #44 (May 07)

The Queen is still here, but it’s unlikely she will show up on this beach. She had a hot day yesterday when the temperature was almost ninety. Today it will max out in the low sixty’s.

And there’s a flat gray overcast plus a promise of rain following some heavy showers last night. That and the low temperature revived several garden plants I set out yesterday and immediately wilted from the heat despite shade covers I put over them.

When we first hit the beach there’s a lone vulture working on a small fish. A raptor is overhead in this same area above the trees somewhere judging from his squawking but he never becomes visible.

The tide is fairly low and a breeze is driving waves ashore. Yesterday was a t-shirt day, but today requires a jacket. Haze is still around though greatly reduced.  It varies but always seems to hang around. The gray sky makes the skyline show up more plainly now and compensates some for looking through the haze.

It looks like the commonest trash to wash up is water bottles. I count twenty-one coming back. Some look almost full. These are the pint sized. Next most common are oil containers. There were three quart-sized, two one-gallon, and one half pint, all empty. The most interesting find is a new flare, the roadside type, but for boat use. Most of these are where no homes are present. Tomorrow I’ll bring a plastic bag and be helpful. Today I just pick up the gallon jugs and the flare.

The fish skeleton is still around from yesterday. The reason it caught my eye then was probably the size of the head. It’s as big as a softball.

Eight oyster boats are about their business. No aircraft show up, although before we headed for the beach a lone helicopter flew over.—-