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 #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 #13 (Mar 07)

 Well, it’s Saturday and we can only go a short ways downstream because several people and dogs are working around the fancy pier. We can’t go upstream along the beach, either, because the high tide is right against the riverbank rocks, unless you want to clamber across them. They pose a potential hazard because stability isn’t guaranteed. If they’re ok one day and a storm comes through, the waves can shift them and cause instabilities.

I’ve begun carrying a walky talky partly because my wife can call, if something comes up at home, but also in case I encounter a problem, my own or someone else’s. A cell phone might be better, but we’ve only one of those and should have a second, if it is used during these walks. So today it’s the radio, the camera, the binoculars and a tape measure just to take a short walk!

Izzy and I do cover enough of the beach to reach the first jetty because I did bring a tape measure. The concrete blocks measure 2 feet x 2 feet x 6 feet, close to what I measured yesterday, but still no reason to call them one-ton or one cubic yard blocks.

The riverbank for this property is high, but sloped more than others and covered with kudzu, that infamous vine that grows very fast. Right now it’s dormant and leafless, leaving a mat of gray vines like a solid mass of spaghetti plastered onto the bank. A few other properties have some of it hanging over, but vines closer to the beach have been carried away by water action and sloughing riverbank.

While kudzu grows fast and can smother vegetation, it is easily contained and pieces washed away in storms do not seem to take root elsewhere. Not everything succumbs to it, either. It will grow up to the base of pine trees, but not climb up the bark. Some of us encourage it, along with anything that will root in soil on our riverbank, for erosion control. The broad leaves that are present during hurricane season, and tangled vines, do help slow soil loss, but are not effective against even a small amount of wave action. The riverbank with the greatest kudzu coverage has the widest beach and little water has reached the bank base for more than a year, so far.

No oyster boats are out today, but a small boat stacked high with black crab pots travels across the bay in preparation for a forthcoming season. The pots are square cages of light gage wire coated with black vinyl. They can be stacked six feet high and out over the edge (gunwales) of the boat, so from a distance a boat load looks like a black cube traveling across the water; very distinctive.

Izzy and I head up our access road. The weather is cool, but we both are pretty warm by the time we get back; that kind of weather. Also, we appreciate the pleasantness even more because the bitting bugs have not yet appeared, but we know they are coming.

The tent caterpillars are more evident today than last Saturday. Their tents have grown from pingpong ball to softball size and larger. I must check trees around our house for them because they can appear anywhere without warning.

The summer wheat is starting to look unkempt as it gains altitude.

One dogwood tree has blossoms that have just started opening. The new green appearing on most trees is developing different shades and tints of the color. An exception is the maple tree that is producing small clusters of young, rusty-red wing-shaped seeds instead of any leaves to get the jump on any competition. The seeds will begin showering down within a month.

The most interesting tree-development is an unknown species that is producing a seed-related cluster on the tip of every twig making multiple tassels of two or three inch length in a tanish-green color. These trees look like they’ve been draped with dreadlocks.

Despite the recent dusting of pollen on just one day along the river, the few pines along this route are still developing the new pine cone clusters that will soon dump great amounts of pollen. So some other major source of pollen has been at work.

As we start up the road some loud engine noises are apparent from the highway area. We never see anything even when we reach the main road, but the sound is pretty continuous. It sounds like dirt bikes are being raced around behind homes across the two-lane highway. When we get home I notice the sound carries all the way to the beach, standing out from the other background sound always present from aircraft, boats, waves, and ground-based vehicles, including lawnmowers, garden tractors, road graders, and construction equipment. Chainsaws and whole-house generators are also around. So, when a rare heavy fog or snowfall block all this sound, it’s really noticeable and you realize how much activity we have around us even though we are miles from any towns. —-