Walking the Beach #75 (Nov 07)

 

 

Let’s call this gap since the last entry the Dog Days of Summer — very little going on. Meanwhile the kudzu reached its full growth for the season. The kudzu develops scented flowers, blue ones a little like to sweet peas. The vines finally buried the large onion patch on one section of river bank and now periodic nighttime frosts are beginning to kill the leaves, the dead parts turning gray like weathered wood.

Unusual beach bodies that appeared over the last few months included one skate, one adult eel and one deer, a doe. The skate was about a foot and half across, the eel two and a half feet long. The doe quickly disappeared from sight, either washed away from shore or buried; I’d vote for the washing because the sand is too shallow. Parts of the skull and a few long bones washed up shortly, the result of warmer water on the decay process. Nowadays fresh deer tracks are visible each morning in the sand. The deer population has increased in the area so much so that one farmer had to shoot 120 of them to protect his 50 acre crop. Of course the dry summer reduced forage for wild life and that has driven them to eat things they usually avoid. The farmer, a hunter, had to bury all the carcasses because the warmer weather ruined the meat.

For several weeks blue-black wasps hop-scotched along the beach looking for spiders to capture. A surprising victim was a small land crab about the size of a nickel attacked by four of them. I didn’t stick around to see how the wasps handled the result.

A new pier was installed just upstream from the fancy one and almost as elaborate. The stairs from atop the bank descended through two landings and straddled a jetty before reaching the pier. A short second set of steps descends from the pier to the beach on each side of the jetty. The remnant of an old set of stairs at the bank top was the starting point of this project. Just the other day a couple months after pier completion some signs of erosion appeared on the bank under the stairs and washing down the bank to fan out across the beach towards the pier, as if a small swimming pool had spilled its contents over the bank. No other erosion signs were obvious anywhere along the bank.

Our fall colors appear to be at their best and mixed with the evergreens. A very dry summer did not affect the result and may have improved them, nor did it have much affect on the small streams and springs issuing from or through the riverbank. However, the amount of water did decline and several wet spots dried up. Leaves are falling everywhere. Even the cypress trees lose their very fine needles, turning brown before dropping. A pleasant cypress scent is strong now perhaps because more seed pods have fallen. The pods contain lots of sticky sap where the fragrance is greatest.

Walking the Beach #43 (May 07)

The Queen is here. Well, not right here on the beach; she’s up river a few miles and on the other side in Williamsburg and Jamestown as part of the 400th anniversay ceremony. You can’t tell it from what’s happening on the river. Five oyster boats and five jet contrails are the up and down of it. The additional security for the event does not show around here unless the oyster boats are disguised patrol craft. A single twin engine military craft flys over heading down stream.

Also, the biting flies are now officially in season. Locally they are called May Flies, of course. I call them deer flies. Several varieties are seen, differing in wing color patterns, but all with a characteristic V or delta shape and the size of the common house fly. Swatting doesn’t normally kill this insect. You have to swat, hold, then slide your hand to crush and roll each one. Otherwise they fall to the ground and recover within minutes. They can bite through a t-shirt and other light material, unlike a similar sized common looking fly that only bites when it lands on bare skin.

We’ve a slight breeze and low tide for our walk, one eagle and two small clusters of shore birds. The eagle lands in the dead cyprus by the low, damaged pier and allows us to get very close for some nice photos before flying off.  A single tern patrols just off shore passing us several times on our path down and back.  I assume it’s the same one.

The breeze doesn’t stir the water as much as yesterday so bird sounds can be heard. Also close to the turnaround a section of vertical clay bank with a little overhang has some spring water leaking out towards the top. The splatter of dripping water is distinctive and loud enough to carry over other sound today.

Nearby two cyprus or cedar tree trunks lie half buried, close together and pointing out into the water, their bare corded surfaces forming a natural jetty. The diameter of each is a couple feet. They’re of note only because sand has accumulated on the down stream side rather than the conventional up stream side.

A piece of possible fossil whale shows up on the beach near the large promontory, not the usual place to find this stuff. This piece, about eight inches long, a couple inches thick on one end and about one inch at the other end, looks like red smooth stone on one side of the larger end. Much of the rest has the porous look of bone. It’ll be added to a small growing pile of the same at the house.

Several deceased crabs are still along the beach. They could be the same ones from yesterday.

The skeleton or mostly skull and a few vertebrae of a large fish, possibly a catfish, has washed up. Something has picked it clean.

The first biting fly appears just as we approach home. They like to buzz around your head and sometimes can really devil a dog, but not all dogs. The amount of moisture on a dog may be important. I’ve seen dozens on our son’s German Pointer, mostly around his nose, during previous summers when he has been in and out of the river.  They are enountered around areas with trees so and the walk close to the house could be called wooded, although houses are mixed in.—-

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.—-