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 #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….

Walking the Beach #62 (Jun 07)

 

Humidity and temperature are both up, but especially humidity this morning, the type that smacks you in the face when you walk outside. Fortunately it hasn’t encouraged the deer flies, yet. They come and go. A single fly, or so it seems, usually shows up around the halfway mark, but doesn’t persist.

It’s mid tide, pretty hazy due to the humidity.  A few old contrails are in the sky along with a few thin clouds. A light breeze blowing down the beach disappears on the way back because we are walking about the same speed as the wind.

Deer tracks are on the beach where we join it. One deer probably made these based on the small number.

Bird life has become scarce. The herons normally seen along the waterline now are high up in the trees. Well, only one, actually. And we scare it off from a greater distance than when they’re in the water. We must look like a greater threat from the top of a tree than at the same level… Kingfishers can always be counted upon to show up, though, and usually two, but always at a distance. This morning they allowed us to get closer than normal, about 75 feet. Maybe it’s getting too hot to fly.

Yesterday the breeze was the same and it brought a sudden stench of a dead thing as we passed under the fancy pier. It was a large and very ripe fish on the beach. This morning only a skeleton remains, about the fastest reduction to date of a carcass. There’s no indication of who did the cleanup work.

A hundred feet past down the beach from this spot for two days in a row there were two sets of strange tracks from the waterline to the riverbank. The two sets were about five feet apart. Each set was made up of two parallel lines of marks about three inches apart that looked like a crab had walked tippy-toe. Nothing showed at the bank, like a hole or something eaten. It could have been a single animal entering the water and coming out five feet away. Tracks of that type did not show up again.

Oyster boats and dead crabs are both pretty scarce. Just one boat and no new crab carcasses. However, land crabs, small brown creatures, are starting to appear amongst jumbled concrete pieces of jetties. They’re furtive so quick glances are how you almost see them most of the time.

On the way back off the beach and past the cyprus tree (bald cyprus) we find two lizards in the burned area where the black snakes had been. One is striped and the other is hidden too deep in a fold under the bark to tell. On a previous day a lizard without stripes was on the outside area and it was the same size as this hidden one. They are pretty brazen to hang out at the opening to the snakes’ den….

Walking the Beach #60 (May 07)

 It’s a nice morning with a low tide and slight breeze. The tidal peak was higher than usual and left a wider swath of smooth beach. When the water recedes, if you look closely the individual wave marks are visible in the sand. I call them lap marks.

It’s clear with the usual two contrails. Twice we see two fighter jets fly by overhead at a low altitude. Their sound blends together into a single sound. I guess when the formation of Blue Angles flys by, if you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell how many there were.

A group of about nine vultures fly up from the beach when we arrive. They coast on downriver where we spook several at another feeding spot just over the first jetty. They are cleaning the beach of dead fish that are more frequent of late. Where they feed there may be nothing left, but the sand looks like a flock of birds shuffled about in a tight group. They totally stir up the sand over a square foot or two, but in a shallow manner and once you’ve seen the result it’s possible to tell where they have been. One area makes this evident from the smell of decayed fish, too, but this is the exception.

Crabs that remain on the sand when the tide goes out are not disturbed by birds or animals. Today the males and females are present in equal numbers. One reacts when I try to turn it over and turns out not only to be alive, but in a soft shell state. It wasn’t aggressive unlike the hard shells and apparently can’t use its claws until the shell hardens.

One section of riverbank is sloped rather than the usual vertical and some fifty garden onions has appeared in a loose grouping amongst the kudzu. Each is ready to flower and has a large flower pod at the top of a single 3 to 4 foot high stalk. At first I didn’t know if they were onions or garlic that had been tossed over the bank or been part of a garden that slipped over the edge as the bank eroded away. The soil is solid clay and it gripped the bulbs so well they can’t be pulled up. Later I used a shovel, dug up one and found it to be a large onion.

Deer tracks have appeared in several places, now. And more bare feet marks are visible in the same area where seen previously. Where the sand is fine enough and the right conditions exist even tiny tracks made by beetles can be seen. Sand can be a great recorder of past activity.

The tide changes the beach in different ways. Sometimes a wavy surface rather than flat is left. A couple places further up have had water wash up, then a short ways parallel to the bank and out again leaving small ripples in the sand. It looks like the beach has six-pack abs.

Birds other than the vultures are much less evident now. Only a few swallows are generally at work and a lone eagle or falcon are seen each morning.

This morning there is only one oyster boat at work.

More fish jumping out of the water are apparent. Perhaps the warmer water is responsible.

At the cyprus tree with the burn mark and black snake habitat a lizard is still evident. It scoots off as we walk by. Either it’s a replacement for the one stalked by the snake, or a replacement.

Biting flys are definitely out in force, but only evident when we leave the beach. I’ve a new defensive device, a piece of sticky tape applied to the back of my hat. It traps sixteen in a couple hours of yard work one day. I’ve only found this product at gardensalive.com, but they are just a terrific. Unfortunately, a new strip must be used each day…..

Walking the Beach #57 (May 07)

 

 

Days have passed but the beach remains. It’s Saturday, moderate tide, clear and breezy but warm from the sun. Rain, some wind-blown high tides followed by wind-blown dry days have produced beach areas that are perfectly flat and smooth, mixed with water-wrinkled, and wind-wrinkled areas.

Sand is building back up in areas where it was removed. The metal ladder exposed before is now concealed and the spots where I found the embedded tube worm fossils is now under a thin layer of sand.

No bird and no oyster boats. The boats have been missing for several days. Today only a single boat loaded with a half dozen oyster traps is on the water.

No contrails can be seen in the clear sky. Only a small two-engine commuter or executive jet passes over while we’re on the beach.

A few more Morning Glorys are out, but they never appear in profusion while the Honey Suckle does and has and the air everywhere is scented with the blossoms.

Up the access road the two fields planted with grass may be hay fields. If so, they should be mowed before long as mowing is ongoing nearby.

A walking couple I meet relate they saw a skunk near their house. Skunks seem to be slowly increasing around us just as the deer, wild turkey and raptors have been. Skunks are rabies carriers so the potential smell problem is a secondary concern.

We also swap some stories about eagles dropping food as they fly above. My story of the large fish in our flower bed that had been dropped on the roof and left a trail of fish scales to mark its path downward is topped with a live eel that crashed through overhead branches to land at their feet. They first thought it was a snake, then had to puzzle out how an eel became airborne.

They were interested in a sticky fly trap patch I’d just tried out on my hat to catch biting May or deer flies. It snared eight of them in a couple hours the first day the flies were active.

An asparagus patch I’d forgotten to check yields four big edible shoots. Six others had already bolted. The picked ones are quite nice eaten during the walk.—-

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 #46 (May 07)

Yet another cool, overcast day; Saturday, too, so only a short trip on the sand. No boats at all. The view downriver seems more clear perhaps because weekend traffic is less. Big cranes in the shipyard down there are pretty clear, but also stand out more against the gray sky.

A bunch of deer tracks are on the beach. This is the same location where the body of a White Tail buck washed up. No tracks around, then. These reach back to the thirty foot high bank. It has enough slope to be an easy path. It’s right in front of a house, but the house is normally unoccupied, not that discourages the deer. A couple times they’ve crossed our yard, too, at mid-day. Once an old dog living with one of the neighbors even escorted a doe to the river edge. Quite a sight..

The coolness and still air bring out the smells from the woods as we head up the access road. Three pink dogwood trees have lost their blossoms and a white one down the road, too. It smells like some honeysuckle may be in bloom. The greenness is intense now that most everything has leafed totally out and is newly fresh. Even some tree trunks are green from ivy winding its way upward. One spot of only a hundred feet is almost a tunnel of trees and is always noticeably cooler all year round.  Again the cooler weather stops the biting flies from attacking us.

Down the road the blackberry bushes are in bloom. There should be plenty of berries judging from the amount of flowers, but the quality is still unknown and berries can be large or small, bland or tasty. A nieghbor couple we meet on this stretch report that local strawberries are ready for picking at a nearby farm. I mention that blueberries will be available in another month at another farm. They reply that last year the blueberries had very little flavor, like these local blackberries. I’ve only picked blueberries at the farm for two years and have to agree with the neighbors. Still, they are good in pies, smoothies, etc.

A good sized magnolia tree about thirty feet high and fifteen wide is covered with buds, some of which are starting to open. The tree seems to like this location and always produces many blossoms. We’ve one that sits on the riverbank and suffers some each year, I think, from salt in the river water blown ashore by stormy weather.

When we return we can reach the beach at the other end of the neighborhood and the tide is far enough out to allow passage along the river.

A few fresh deer tracks are visible just where we join the beach. Where we head up the bank for our house we find the next door neighbor moving pieces of a large dead pine tree he had cut down and sectioned. He’s assembling a pile that will be burned when weather permits. The felling process a week earlier provided great entertainment for our twenty month old grandson.—-

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 #39 (Apr 07)

 Saturday routine today with addition of one German Pointer. The morning started off clear and calm with a comfortable temperature, but turned overcast early on. We first walked the access road to the end of the neighborhood, but too many people were around for us to reach the beach, there, and big dogs alerted soon after our arrival on the beach at the other end of the neighborhood where we normally access it.

During the night we had two inches of rain. It had washed many small channels in the bank and at one place sand had been removed down to the clay layer out to the waterline.

No oyster boats are out. No contrails are visible, of course. One commercial jet again flys over on a flight path to the local airport. The air is more clear, but still not what I’d expect after heavy rain.

The water appears to be receding from high tide of perhaps an hour earlier. Although no breeze can be felt or appears to disturb tree tops, waves are slowly rolling ashore for some reason. No breeze normally allows more bugs to annoy walkers, but none are out at all this morning. No birds, either.  One eating-sized blue crab, deceased, is laying at the high tide mark.  I didn’t check to see if it was male or female.  Also a fist-sized chunk of whale bone fossile is near the waterline.  It looks somewhat like porous cement or pumice.

We return to the main access road over the small creek that flows out the tongue of land covered with Cyprus trees. Debris in the creek indicates water was high for awhile. The flow is still heavier than yesterday. The water is clouded with suspended silt runoff despite the very gentle slope and much wetland type vegetation to cause a tortuous flow path.

Ditches along the access road are full of water which makes the German Pointer happy.  A couple frogs are making use of the water, too.  Everything is lush, this being the second good rain in a week to speed spring growth. All our lawns will leap upward during the next few days.

The tent caterpillars are on the move. They appear on the roadway in places where no nests are apparent in nearby bushes and trees. They seem to migrate long distances, especially for caterpillars. I’m seeing them crawl up the sides of our house and in many landscaping plants, again with no apparent nearby nests. A neighbor thinks the winds help blow the caterpillars about.

A white tail deer walks away from us up the opposite side of one field about seventy five yards away. When we return one neighbor with the highest grass is slowly making headway mowing tall wet grass to catch up with Mother Nature for the moment. —