Walking the Beach #80 (Dec 07)

 

It’s getting colder now. We’ve had days that started in the 60’s and dropped twenty degrees by evening, while a normal day starts and ends cool with a warm mid day. Today it’s calm, overcast and grey, as well as in the 50’s, which will drop to the 20’s tonight for the first hard freeze. It’s a good day to rake leaves; they’re dry and won’t blow about. The high tide level on the beach is marked with small windrows of leaves and while leaves still trickle down, the flow is dwindling. The colors are fading, too.

We walk later nowadays to capture warmer temperatures, just the opposite of summertime. No birds today. Heard a single cry of loon yesterday. A couple days ago another flock of cormorants attacked a patch of river but without the seagulls.

The small oyster dredger is back near the turnaround place. Several far out tongers are back after a few absent days. Meanwhile one larger dredger appears each day somewhere in the bay.

Workman gloves wash ashore from time to time; never in pairs. Most are rubber coated, a black one here, yellow there, blue another time. Once it was a knit glove that could have been used as a liner. I started making photos of them. One stuck up out of the sand like it was the last part of a buried person.

The last two days one or two gophers have left tunnels in the beach sand near the base of the bank. A single tunnel in two places meanders along about thirty feet. The two places are fifty yards apart.

One day while looking in the vegetation along the bank base for a small stick to throw for Izzy a sand spur attacked my finger. It’s the first one I’ve seen in our area although they are plentiful along the ocean south of us. It is not a welcomed discovery and hopefully won’t be repeated.

Walking the Beach #76 (Nov 07)

T-shirt weather has changed to a light jacket version, but today we had both. During our walk it was cool with enough humidity and still air to bring moderate fog. A loon sounded twice, a bird that’s not normally heard here.

Bird life declined during the hot and dry season and the only regular birds were one or two herons and periodic kingfishers. Great white splotches along the beach showed where herons have bathroomed, but during the walks the birds are always high up in trees along the bank.  The loon is an exception.   Another are two pelicans that appeared several days back, the first since springtime. They were heading upstream.

Another exception was a flock of cormorant mixed with seagulls.  Over two hundred cormorants were swimming, diving and flying about over a football-sized patch of river.  The seagull were flying amongst the airborne cormorants; none in the water.  Looked like the seagull were harassing the other birds, trying to steal what they were eating, probably a school of fish.

Signs of the river otter appeared again at the turnaround point and its tracks are often visible as we proceed. Having an oft-washed beach leaves a clean slate making such tracks easily visible.

A small oyster dredger that started with two men and shifted to one is usually close-in, near the turnaround. Today it was absent, though other, larger boats are out. My son noted, during a visit, that while the close-in boats move about, the group that gathers much farther out seems to be stationary. Through the binoculars you could see that the watermen in these were using oyster tongs. An experienced neighbor explained that the distant oyster beds were public and only oyster tongs can be used. The tongs, which are about ten feet long, require a lot of upper body strength for all-day sessions. Google the term if you want more info and to see pictures.

 

The tongers were absent for a few weeks and on each side of that time only a couple were out. Recently as many as 18 of these ‘far out’ boats were present, the most seen at that location this year. All summer, also, two crab boats have been fishing the same area. Crabbers move over the entire bay while the oyster boats that do move only cover one or several small areas of an acre or so. The crab traps used here are black-coated wire, so when a crabber has a load of traps to distribute the back half of the boat starts off topped with a huge black cube of stacked traps.

The oyster boats are of three types. The tongers use a simple open boat with no superstructure, usually. The small dredgers are similar to tonger boats but have an 8-foot post mounted about midway, closer to the stern than the bow, and topped with an arm that extends about 4 feet out. A pulley at the end of this arm allows the dredge to be dropped and lifted. I don’t think the post pivots. Rather, the operator has a second line attached to the dredge to swing it into the boat. Several guy wires anchor the post but are almost invisible from a distance.

The next larger size dredger has the post, a larger one, and a slightly longer beam attached at the base angles out like a fishing pole, forming a V with the first post. Wires anchor the first post and one connects the top of it to the angled beam where the pulley for the dredge is attached. The bottom of the posts are attached more towards the stern than the smaller boats and I think the angled beam can swivel once a loaded dredge comes up to swing the load aboard.

Walking the Beach #38 (Apr 07)

Weather is better this morning, though still breezy, cloudy and humid. Less wind means lower tide level, but still almost high enough to prevent passage around the fallen tree. We just manage, but are stopped by another rough spot about fifty yards short of the turn around place.

The cormorant we saw yesterday appears at the low pier again, and flys off towards the lighthouse base. No other large birds are around today. Some small ones do appear around the big promontory. A small flock of what may be swallows swoop about. They don’t quite have the shape, but fly in a small loose flock that moves about like swallows. They also make a sound that’s like a short mechanical raspberry, or one or those noise makers that you twirl around, or the sound of a playing card held against bicycle wheel spokes.

Only two oyster boats are working and a small navy ship, perhaps a LST, is heading downstream.

Two types of biting flies are now about. One looks deceptively like a medium sized house fly but causes a quick slap after a few seconds on a patch of bare skin. The other is almost too small to see, is about a sixteenth of an inch long and narrow, like a skinny, short pencil mark. They’re only noticeable when they bite and that’s what attracts your attention to the location. Neither leave an obvious mark or lasting sting once removed, but do hold your attention while in action. The dogs seem to be well-protected by their fur, even short hairs.

One jetty is made of the large concrete blocks stacked two high.  Sand on the upriver side is six inches from the top.  On the downriver side it’s almost two feet lower and is recently being eroded back towards the bank so that now there is a small sand cliff just even with the last blocks closest to the bank.  Much more sand removal will allow water to get around the end and we’ll just have to see what happens then; da, daa, da dum!—-

 

Walking the Beach #37 (Apr 07)

We’re in the midst of an “easter”, if that’s a northeaster without the north part. The wind’s blowing into the shore at least ten mph and while we are about mid-tide, based on a high water mark, the wind has driven waves and waterline further ashore so we’re only able to make it to the fallen tree obstacle and have to turn back.

Of course the crashing waves make most of the sound and even the sounds of the romping German Pointer through the surf don’t come across. He doesn’t care and just enjoys the deeper water chasing thrown sticks as we go and return. Where his feet touch down there may be a smooth surface; windrows of large, coarse, broken shells have been deposited along much of the beach a few feet above the waterline.

No oyster boats are out and the water is pretty choppy, as expected. It’s overcast, still really hazy, and only about fifty-five degrees compared with yesterday’s seventy, certainly a change from no-shirt weather of the previous day. A jet liner passes overhead on the way out judging from the sound coming through the clouds.

The low damaged pier is just before the big tree obstacle. As we approach the pier a lone cormorant flys off towards the light house base. This is where the dead one appeared on the beach a few weeks ago. Sometimes the lighthouse base is covered with black colored birds, but it isn’t apparent until binoculars are used. It’s likely that the birds are cormorants. They do gather together in desirable locations.

A raptor comes down the beach carrying a strand or two of nest-building material. It heads into the river and in the direction of the lighthouse base. A raptor nest should be big enough to see with binoculars, but none appears to be there. While the location is suitable, nearby boat traffic may be too active, but we’ve seen a nest on pilings that are pretty close to a ferry landing, so the raptor may have been heading for the opposite shore.

We meet our distance requirement on the return by using the access road to the beach at the other end of our neighborhood. As we start back a squawking blue heron flies overhead in pursuit of a hawk or eagle. It appears the herons have a nest in the neighborhood and the raptor is too close.—-

Walking the Beach #26 (Apr 07)

A perfectly clear day with eight oyster boats in their usual location. The air is calm and water is barely washing ashore at half tide. Enough breeze exists, however, to dapple the water, the dapples changing with shifts in wind direction.

Three guys are now working on the fancy pier roof job. They could be done by tomorrow or no more than a third day from the looks of the progress being made.

Not a contrail in sight today during the entire walk. Sounds from fighter jets and one prop job occur, but nothing visible to see. On the way back a lone helicopter appears up river near the reserve fleet for a few minutes then disappears.

The lone Great Blue Heron around the promontory is spooked again and squawks as he flys off. I sometimes call them gray herons. It looks like both terms are used, although the formal and proper name is Great Blue Heron.

A mother eagle and one kid are in the same area. Mom was on the shore when we came around the promontory. She flew up to the tree where the kid was and both took off from there to somewhere inland.

Two of the common terns fly by.  Their distinctive split tails make identificatione easy.  Perched out in the water on a piece of driftwood is a cormorant with wings spread for drying. 

A few pockets of pollen were in the water along the shore before the promontory, but after the promontory there was a foot-wide ribbon of a couple hundred yards, so the pollen problem is still pretty bad. Ground up leaves and other vegetation that looks like tea leaves is found along the shore, too. The beach along the pollen stretch is marked with a series of lines from the high tide mark to the water line made from the river tea leaves as the retreating tide surges from gusts of wind. The result looks like growth rings. The same marks are present without the tea leaves in other areas, but not as apparent.

Two types of fossilized coral appear here, too. One looks like natural sponge and is about the same color. The other looks like draped fabric that’s petrified. When parts wear away pockets are exposed that are big enough to stick a finger inside. The color is the same as the sponge type. It may be they are the same and the sponge is left after enough of the draped part erodes away. The sponge type is more prevalent, but both seem to be limited to a small area in this less populated area.

We are almost ready to leave the beach and discover a few bare foot prints in the dry sand well back from the high tide mark. These look to be big enough for an adult; another adventurous person. —-