Walking the Beach #15 (Apr 07)

 Ah, a people-free day, again. It’s warm this morning and clear with a mid-tide and very little breeze, so we warm up pretty fast. We had a small shower last evening making it much more humid this morning. Raindrop dappling of the sand echoes the rain where the tide hasn’t smoothed things out.

On the way to the beach we pass under a thirty-foot cedar tree and flush a mature eagle. Just as we reach the beach the new resident blue heron from near an upstream pier also flys off at our approach.

Six instead of seven oyster boats are out this morning and only two jet contrails. As I write this I see two oyster boats making an early return, then realize they are connected and the second one is in tow, so there must have been mechanical problems.

A couple dogwoods along the bank are much further along with blossoming than the one we saw yesterday half way up our access road. Several yellow forsythia bushes are also out. Unfortunately I see there are some tent caterpillar webs evident, too, at two places along our route.

The fancy pier now has a second boat in the second, new hoist or sling. This was where the fire could be seen yesterday. From the ashes it looks to have been treated wood, sort of a gray-green color. The ashes would more than fill a five-gallon bucket. Any breeze that comes by kicks up a small green cloud, covering the nearby sand. I guess dilution is the solution, combining wind action and water by way of rain and tide to disperse the toxic stuff.

Disposing of treated wood is troublesome to me because that is all that is used on the piers and large amounts are swept into coves after hurricanes when piers are heavy damaged or destroyed. A small pile of ashes is less hazardous, hopefully, than a very large pile that would result if anyone decided to clear storm debris in a cove with fire. The cove I pass going to the beach with Izzy is a wetland with a small stream and some twenty Cyprus trees. It’s more a low spot than a cove, but a lot of treated lumber was extracted from it after Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

Anyway, we can make it all the way down the beach today. Three Kingfishers set up a clamor towards the end and individually launch from the downstream bank to dance through the sky around and over us to downstream perches.

Lots of pollen can be seen in patches and longer runs of water at the beach edge. A close look at the sand shows a light coating of yellow where the tide turned a couple feet above the waterline. Today’s paper shows a very low pollen count of Oak, Birch and Cedar. An online check from another source shows a very high count, almost the maximum, for today and the following three, made up of Maple, Cedar, Juniper and Birch. What’s on the water agrees with the online report. The Internet version of the newspaper doesn’t contain a pollen count; too bad.

Close to the halfway mark we find a marker float washed up that looks brand new. A waterman must have lost if off his boat. The top half is fluorescent-orange and bottom is candy-apple red. There’s an art center in the nearby town of Smithfield where I’ve dropped off interesting beach stuff and this will make a nice addition. The museum in town has river-related artifacts and is another possibility, but the art center doesn’t and probably should. Besides, the museum has been closed for awhile due to some flooding from an unusual rain we had last October — eighteen inches in less than twenty-four hours!

Other insects besides the tent caterpillars are beginning to appear. A small black fly that circulates low to the ground and around damp sand is evident and bothers Izzy some, but he’s antsy anyway. The carpenter bees are out and have been busy helping with pollination. Two butterflies are out and I can’t identify them, although one is commonly seen. It is canary yellow and black, might be a swallowtail without the tail; has the markings of a monarch, except the monarch is orange and black. The other is mostly black with a band of canary yellow across each lower wing. Another research project, it looks like.

Izzy has finally decided it is warm enough for him to get his feet wet and find some drinking water along our route. He isn’t afraid of the river, at least not historically, but nowadays tends to avoid it, until today. When we get home I have to wipe him off with a damp sponge to remove any pollen, then strip myself and rinse my hair because we have an allergic person inside who is not enjoying this particular time. —

Walking the Beach #12 (Mar 07)

 A much nicer day, though still a high tide. It’s clear, the river water is bright with sparkles and a comfortable breeze. Only six oyster boats today, but two tugs (one in front and one in back) are moving a large gray ship downstream. It has a radome on one end and several very large radio antenna amidships, so it could be military or research. There’s an Army transportation base on the river upstream and it might be from there. The ghost or reserve fleet is not scheduled to remove any more ships for awhile making it an unlikely source. As it moves downriver a small helicopter hovers nearby, perhaps a news chopper. I take several photos with the binocular camera and they come out with limited haze, but not great.

Four contrails are visible in the clear sky. That’s average. Later there are six. One has red coloring on the nose end, so it must be a commercial airliner. At the end of our walk a Sikorsky helicopter comes over the bank and crosses the river a mile away.

When we start our a blue heron flys up from some nearby spot on the beach upstream and heads downstream. They are common and there’s one or two somewhere along the way when our walk included an upstream portion of the river. It may be a seasonal thing.

We still have to clamber over the jettys and this time I use a small dog leash I carry to mark off dimensions of a concrete block. It is 68 inches long, 23 thick and 22 high. That makes for 20 cubic feet and at 150 lbs a cubic foot of concrete, a weight of 3000 lbs. So it’s not a cubic yard and it’s not a one-ton block. Dunno, but it’s pretty hefty, yet still gets moved around by the water when conditions are right.

Only three pull ups today.

A small chunk about the size of a match box of concreted (cementitious) fossil shell mix catches my eye because of some clear material mixed in with it. This is the third time I’ve found this clear material. It looks like mineral crystal. One piece another time had a geometric shape and the third was a thin slab about a quarter inch thick and six inches on the side. All of it looks like it comes from the same source. I’ll add this one to the others at home.

The blue heron landed in the water at the shoreline near the fancy pier and allows several photos to be taken, including one in flight on the way back upstream when we get too close.

We get past the halfway obstacle this time. Less wind must be a factor today, but it’s still a close call for getting feet wet.  Right in this area we find a nice matching pair of chesapecten jeffersonius fossil scallop shells.  They are stuck in place, filled with and partly covered with the cement-type stuff making it all weigh about five pounds, but certainly more durable than clean half shells.

The halfway obstacle is at the biggest promontory and two turkey vultures are circling overhead. A house sits on this point of land and they appear to be interested in that area. I get a good shot of one with the binocular camera and am concerned he may be too close for the lens, but it turns out ok, though still not great quality: not the greatest camera. A couple kingfishers buzz us and I get one coming directly overhead which also turns out with the same, but lesser quality. The regular camera just doesn’t have the design that allow quick viewing and shooting, especially with bright lighting.

Past this obstacle we have to climb over several piles of tangled tree trunks, driftwood, and big chunks of fossilized coral, and the cemented seashells. We are right up against the bank in places and have to keep in mind that chunks of the bank can come loose at any time, the reason we stay as far away as possible, when we can. We also have to start watching for snakes when climbing over stuff. As the weather warms they will be out and a driftwood pile looks like a good place for a reptile to roost.

It’s in this area we see some deer tracks in the sand. They are a regular feature on the upstream route at one location. These are where the bank is pretty high, but a deer could still find a spot to get up, if the need arose.

Also in this area there’s another float washed up. This one is half red and half orange with a number, 159, carved into it. A letter would precede the number, but a chunk of the Styrofoam is broken off where it would be. Nearby is also an interesting feather that may be from a brown hawk. It’s a foot long, in perfect shape and has eight alternating banks of brown and light tan along the length. Izzy is most interested in sniffing it, but doesn’t want to chew on it like the usual stick. We also find a ball that may be a tennis ball with the fuzz worn off for him to chase a few times on the way back before he loses interest.

This was definitely a better day. —-