Walking the Beach #82 (Dec 2007)

 

This may be the last entry for the year due the busy holidays. It’s the day before Christmas; very calm, clear and cool but the humidity makes it feel warmer. For two days the tide has been up to the riverbank where we access the beach and this is the first day we could walk along the river, although the tide is still quite high. Daisy was house-bound for a week after a neutering operation and this is the first we’ve seen her, not that Izzy missed her heavy-footed jostling efforts to play with him. She has the endurance, flexibility and nimbleness of youth. I’ve learned to be forewarned by the slight tinkle of her dog tags as she rockets up from behind in case she happens to clip my leg, because she can hit right at the knee and drop you like a professional football player if you don’t brace for it.

Another reason Daisy has been house bound is that she had been in heat and a male dog had appeared, mated with her and hadn’t left the area. He appears to be a stray too with no collar, but healthy. It looks like these were pups last year for Christmas and abandoned now just before Christmas when a new crop of puppy will be given away! Daisy’s new owners don’t need another dog and placing found-dog ads in the local newspaper didn’t locate an owner, so the animal control folks were brought in. The male is very cautious, though, and a trap had to be set. It seems to have worked after a few days because the trap is gone, Daisy has been allowed out, and the male hasn’t appeared.

A heavy rain occurred right after the last high-high tide leveled and smoothed the beach. It changed the smooth sand to a dimpled surface.  The next high tide, a smaller one,  smoothed the sand part way up again. Then in a few places where water flowed off the bank it left a woven pattern. Most of the fallen leaves that had collected in windrows are gone, probably buried.

Only contrails are present overhead this morning and a good twenty old ones are visible, but grouped on one side of the sky like they were all pushed over there. Four active trails are being added to this collection.

Two more dead birds are on the beach close to our starting point and a few tens of yards apart. Both are seagulls and neither appear damaged.

Only three oyster boats are out, two far out but further downstream than normal, and the one small boat that works close to shore. A container ship is headed upstream when we start out. Behind the ship a quarter mile or so a tug pulls a large black barge. Barges are often loaded with piles of sand or gravel that make characteristic shapes above the barge. This barge shows none of this, but the sides look high which could mean it’s empty and riding high or just that it’s a different type of barge with a different load.

We make it almost to the turnaround point before the high tides stops us. On the way back Daisy discovers and attacks a large cube of Styrofoam and tries to demolish it leaving little pieces of plastic at several places on the beach before I can wrest it away.

An interesting bullet-shaped pink Styrofoam float marker with a green band and engraved owner number washed ashore. It’s totally covered with barnacle footprints where they attached and then broke away. It looks like it has been used for a few years before breaking loose. All the others I’ve seen have been white and painted one or more colors. This one looks like the pink color is throughout.

Walking the Beach #55 (May 07)

Today it’s warmer and practically no breeze.  Despite a high tide we still make it to the end and back. Waves, though small, are coming ashore in groups with hardly any water movement between times. No boats are nearby although eight oyster boats are working their usual places on the river. It seems unlikely they are causing the wave action, but they look like the wake from a boat.

A young eagle flys off as we reach the beach. It might have been making a low pass or perched on the beach. No marks are in the sand so it was probably just cruising by when we appeared.

The sky has a slight overcast but six contrails are visible. Only two are around when we reach the mid point, but six are up there by the time we finish up and two passenger jets fly over towards the airport. Meanwhile the number of boats stays the same.

The air is about as clear as it gets which means the large shipyard and James River Bridge can be seen downstream. Yesterday, despite a stiff breeze, cool weather and morning rain, the shipyard and bridge could not be seen.

The rain and tide have smoothed the sand.  As soon as we start out some tiny tracks can be seen. They aren’t from a bird and are smaller than Izzy’s. He’s a mix of boston bull terrier and chihuahua and overweight at thirteen pounds. His tracks are the size of a quarter and tend to group in two’s. The tiny tracks are about the size of a one-cent piece and appear as a groups of four. They appear and disappear the whole mile we walk and are closer to the waterline than the bank. They might be some interesting, cuddly critter like a small possum or young raccoon, but most likely it’s a rat; sorry.

As we get close to the halfway mark some larger prints without toenails appear. These are about the size of a half dollar and may be from some sort of cat. Then finally at the fallen tree, nearby, is a scruffed up area in the sand like what’s appeared before. It looks like big paws were used to do the scrabbling, but not obvious tracks are in or around that area.

On the way back a fish jumps out of the water a short ways from shore. I don’t see many, but it may be the waves make them hard to see.

An eagle flys out towards the opposite bank carrying a a long skinny branch.  This happened once before and I didn’t see where it went. This time I keep an eye on it. It appears to go out past the lighthouse base and a little downstream before landing atop of piling. By that time it might have dropped the branch because the post doesn’t look like a nest is on top of it.—-

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 #23 (Apr 07)

We have a little warmer day today, though still pretty cool. The tide is at low level exposing some of the mud flats. The sky is cloud free, but hazy with a couple very small contrails. Two oyster boats are working near the lighthouse base.

It feels like no breeze on the way down although some can be seen moving what leaves are out on trees up on the bank. However, on the way back it feels like a steady twenty MPH wind. There was probably a shift while we were around the promontory and I couldn’t feel it until we rounded the point on the way back. No sound from the boats could be heard and just a little from the waves on the way out; only wind noise on the return, of course.

The four eagles are still hanging around, moving between trees and on down the riverbank as we approach. Mom flys out and lands on a branch from a storm-displaced tree on the tidal flats a hundred yards out. At the same time a small oyster boat with one person heads towards us and stops a little ways from the eagle which tolerates this. The waterman shovels something that sounds like oyster shells out of the boat bottom into the river. This lasts about ten minutes and he heads back out, strange behavior unless he is seeding an oyster bed.

I started filming a movie with the camera from the halfway point up to the promontory point with some running commentary. The result is usable but a little grainy and while the small oyster boat with nearby perching eagle are covered, they can only be seen as unidentifiable specs.

During the filming process two kingfishers appear. They’re too small to show in the movie and their sounds are not picked up by the camera. They were not around on the first leg, so must have been inland or followed us down rather than our previous experience of coming upon them and being leapfrogged.

The cold weather of several days past was bad enough to do some damage to newer growth, but not too much. —-

Walking the BEach #22 (Apr 07)

There’s ice on the outside dog water bowl, again, this morning and patches of frost on the lawn. Izzy and I are out an hour earlier than usual because of some errands today so it’s a little cooler for this walk.

A high, thin cloud cover allows some sun to get through and the sun has a large halo from high altitude ice crystals. Fortunately the air is pretty still, so no wind chill to worry about.

The tide is out and wavelets reaching the beach are small, rolling in about one a second. Still they generate most of the background noise.

Only one fishing boat is visible. It’s the large size with several boom arms clustered around the cargo area. It moves down river and out of sight, engine sounds drifting in to us over the river. It shows up later, after our walk, probably just be returning from work elsewhere. By the time we reach the half way point two of the regular oyster boats have taken up their stations near the lighthouse base.

Jet noise and at least one prop-driven airplane can be heard, but contrails never appear. Towards the end of our walk a small single-engine plane crosses high overhead.

On the way down we spook a lone juvenile eagle near the fancy pier. It moves a short distance to a tree where another bird is visible. A lot of eagle talk ensues. Two juveniles then fly off, but another form is still visible. As we get closer a third juvenile and then an adult eagle leave the three and head downstream along the riverbank. Mom appears to still have a brood she is teaching or trying to disperse.

Going and coming I look for the thick oyster shell fossils and note there are no concentrations of them. There’s perhaps a few dozen strewn along much of the mile we cover. Also, the thick layers of gray clay with a dense mixture of fossils visible at a couple places are made up mostly of the gray Chesapecten jeffersonius fossils and another white, fairly smooth and oval-shaped clam shell. A quick look at one area turns up just one small oyster shell. The small conical shells I found at another place were mixed with a brown soil, sand and mixed crushed shells. They are present in the gray clay, too, but only rarely.

Near the waterline where we first join the beach are two of the bullet-shaped Styrofoam floats on top of the water. They look like those attached to oyster bed markers, but appear to mark crab pots and will almost be left dry at low-low tide. If they’re crab pots, they must be from last year as this is not crab season. Our lowest tide should occur in a couple weeks and the reason for the floats may become visible then. —-

Walking the Beach #19 (Apr 07)

Wow, it’s cold this morning. There was a skim of ice on the dog’s outside water bowl. It has warmed up a little and fortunately only a slight breeze is present, along with just a high thin overcast that lets the sun through.

The tide is on the low side and we have only the usual single obstacle, the long and large fallen tree we have to climb under near the major promontory, just past the low damaged pier. There are eight oyster boats lined up near the lighthouse base, but I can’t hear any of them. The wind must be blowing in their direction. The water hits the beach with slow, lazy waves, but on top of that further out are large patches of agitated water as if big schools of fish are just below the surface and thrashing about. That’s the wind kicking up a little action.

Our walk takes the usual hour and the number of contrails varies from one to five, active ones that is. Some of the cloud cover comes from old contrails that have spread out. A half dozen of them are up there. Some of the active contrails are quite short, like the wake of a small boat while others stretch many miles.

A long-dead cormorant has washed ashore near the low pier. The body is mostly gone, but the head and beak, especially that hooked beak, are distinctive enough to make for an easy identification. We see a few of them out in the water, but a large population of at least twenty perch on big piling clusters that protect a ferry landing a few miles upstream. 

There’s no odor associated with the dead bird and smells are mostly absent on the beach.  I’ve never noticed any odors from the oyster boat diesel engines or beach debris like a dead fish or crabs that wash ashore even during the summer.  The deer carcass that appeared a few months back produced some odor, but only on days when the wind was right — or more correctly, wrong — and then only for a hundred feet from it.  That was the worst case situation and might have been more troubling in warmer weather rather than wintertime.

It’s a very quiet day and cold enough to keep your hands in your pockets as you walk. A lone observation helicopter appears over water and heads back ashore down from the turnaround point. One owl hoots a few times and a couple birds can be heard along the way, but nothing is flying about this morning. However, we do see that red-tailed hawk again, perched on a piling off the end of the low damaged pier about a hundred yards away. Most of a fish can be seen sticking out from under a foot through the binoculars. The color of the plumage is more visible and brighter today showing a very light tan breast and light brown back. All this agrees with any pictures seen on the internet. He makes hawkish sounds as we get a little closer and soon flys off, but not with the fish.

An interesting fossil worth keeping is an intact ivory-colored clam shell (two sides together) that filled with a dark brown sandy mixture some millions of years ago, was then petrified or fossilized, and finally about eighty percent of the two shell halves were chipped away by natural processes making it look like a cutaway drawing. You can see much of the calcified brown sand and the impression it made of the shells’ undersides, more so for one side than the other where several holes have been eroded into the sand. The whole thing is about four inches across.

When we think of beaches it’s the version where mostly there is just sand and sometimes a variety of shells. They are placid and peaceful, until the sunburn sets in or a hurricane arrives. This beach is more the industrialized version with enough going on to make it difficult to just watch for fossilized shark’s teeth or arrow heads. —-