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 #41 (Apr 07)

 We made an early start today while the weather is cool because the forecast is in the 80’s. No clouds today so we can see seven contrails. Four commercial jetliners fly over on different paths while we come and go.

Seven boats are oystering when we start and two more join in by the time we return.

The fancy pier is re-equipped with a boat in one sling. An interesting twelve-by-twelve platform built on the beach near this pier has a small flat bottomed boat with a horse and a half outboard slung under the platform. The platform is six feet up with no stairs or ladder. The piling at each corner extends another six feet above the platform. This small boat was removed, too, at the same time as the big one.

The water is very quiet and we are at mid tide; no breeze. The German Pointer is now gone and the only noise, other than jets passing over, is made by various birds. Just a few can be seen; no eagles or hawks or herons. A few shore birds we’d seen before hop along the water in front of us and a few doves show up midway.

Several tiny deceased crabs are scattered along the way. Only one of them is big enough to show the typical blue coloring. The numbers are increasing!

A sad note is loss of a chunk of bank in front of a house perched within twenty feet of the edge. Repair work was done on this spot about six month earlier, filling a washed-out place about eight feet wide, five deep and right back almost to the house foundation. Large metal stakes for bracing were also dislodged. A single elderly lady lives in the house and we had tried to convince her to move rather than attempt these repairs. It took an eighteen inch rainfall to cause the initial damage. The current problem was caused by just two.—-

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. —

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.—-