Walking the Beach #71 (Jun 07)

 Hot and humid weather is here. At 7 AM with a slight breeze, wearing a t-shirt, you can be pretty sweaty after a short beach walk. Cloud cover is thin and a humid haze helps block direct sunlight, which helps, but Izzy still starts panting shortly after we start.

A few fresh deer tracks from a lone deer are along the waterline. More show up at several places over the entire distance we cover. Could be the same critter.

The small sink hole in sand by the first jetty has been filled in. I just noticed the change, but don’t recall seeing it for a couple weeks.

A decapitated water moccasin is close to the waterline at the fancy pier. It has been there several days and looks like someone chopped or shot off the head. Nothing has touched it, yet, in contrast with fast attacks by vultures on any stranded fish. In that vein the osprey carcass past the promontory had been gutted and stripped to the breastbone only a couple days after washing up. The wings and head are untouched. The legs with impressive talons are also gone, which may be by human hand.

Otter tracks appear in several places and may be along much of the beach toward the less trafficked area. I have trouble distinguishing otter from dog. They are much alike to me, but I think the otter prints lack toenail marks.

The place at the turnaround point that had been used as a sandbox by the otter went untouched for a couple weeks. I thought it had left the area until today when the usual spot showed some disturbance.

The tide is low so beach obstacles were easy to skirt. Only a couple of crabbers are out today, but no boats have been around on several days.

Contrails are also few these hot, humid days. This morning a couple jet liners crossed over the river on their way from the local airport.

Bird life is greatly reduced the last few days, too.  Today typically one young eagle appears as we start our walk.  Close to the mid point a lone heron launches from a tree top.  No kingfishers and only a few starlings can be seen.  Even fewer fish can be seen jumping in the warmer river water which is about 80 degrees.

The low damaged pier is now under construction. New two-by-sixes now connect 25 pilings spaced about eight feet apart. These are what the planks are attached to, so they connect pilings on each side plus running along the inside and outside of each pile. That’s a lot of expensive lumber.

The used pilings that were in the water, then pulled up on the beach are now gone. It doesn’t look like they were used on this pier, so may have been carted off for use elsewhere.

Pilings or piles is a strange name for these wooden posts, but if you look up the word in the dictionary, this same term applies to batteries, nuclear reactors and part of a rug. No wonder English is such a tough language.

I’ve started doing slow pull-ups on the pull-up tree, taking thirty seconds for each one. I can now do seven of the usual version, but barely two of the slow ones. Doing fewer repetitions causes less joint irritation, but the difficulty and benefit seems to be equal.

We had a breeze going down the beach, but not coming back, just the opposite of what you want. Off the beach it’s shady and more of a breeze seems to be available and it’s appreciated…

Walking the Beach #67 (Jun 07)

 

It’s going to be the hottest day this year and even very early it’s warm and hazy from the humidity. The sky is clear except for a small wispy cloud and sun is up but the haze blocks much of the sun’s heat, which is helpful since we’ve no breeze. Tide is low and water is slowly lapping at the shore, more like a river should be than the usual wave action.

The onion patch is less visible. Kudzu tendrils around toppled flowering heads wrapping themselves around ground vines stitching the mounds in place. The flowering heads seem to be doing fine under the greenery despite the limited sunlight. A single sunflower has rooted from a seed dropped by a bird on the bare soil close to the base of a vertical piece of bank. A ten-inch blossom grew from the poor soil with little water and only the baking sunlight. Smart bird!

The low damaged pier now has a small pile-driving boat parked next to the end. It looks like repairs may be planned. I call it a pile-driver, but the vertical device on the back end may be just to upend piles . They can be set in place by washing a hole under the bottom so they sink into the riverbed from their own weight. Besides the boat looks too small to handle the pile-driving weight. I didn’t think any pilings were missing or damaged, just the connections and planks, so an addition may be in order.

Two peregrine falcons are fishing near the shore, hovering and diving periodically to catch fish in the shallows. Our passage doesn’t bother them. Two eagles and two herons are near the turnaround point, sort of permanent residents for the summer it appears.

Deer tracks appear in two places on the beach, widely separated, and I would think two of them are involved.  Bare footprints have also shown up.  This time it looks like some are adult and some are child sized.

No more dead fish have appeared and only a couple small crabs have washed up. The dragonflies are more numerous and varied, but not as plentiful as last year; not yet anyway. A few mosquitoes have appeared, so the dragonflies are timely.

Two working boats are out.  One has a load of black crab traps piled several feet high and slowly travels from downstream close in to shore towards the river center a couple miles upstream.  He must be placing traps, but it’s not obvious…

Walking the Beach #62 (Jun 07)

 

Humidity and temperature are both up, but especially humidity this morning, the type that smacks you in the face when you walk outside. Fortunately it hasn’t encouraged the deer flies, yet. They come and go. A single fly, or so it seems, usually shows up around the halfway mark, but doesn’t persist.

It’s mid tide, pretty hazy due to the humidity.  A few old contrails are in the sky along with a few thin clouds. A light breeze blowing down the beach disappears on the way back because we are walking about the same speed as the wind.

Deer tracks are on the beach where we join it. One deer probably made these based on the small number.

Bird life has become scarce. The herons normally seen along the waterline now are high up in the trees. Well, only one, actually. And we scare it off from a greater distance than when they’re in the water. We must look like a greater threat from the top of a tree than at the same level… Kingfishers can always be counted upon to show up, though, and usually two, but always at a distance. This morning they allowed us to get closer than normal, about 75 feet. Maybe it’s getting too hot to fly.

Yesterday the breeze was the same and it brought a sudden stench of a dead thing as we passed under the fancy pier. It was a large and very ripe fish on the beach. This morning only a skeleton remains, about the fastest reduction to date of a carcass. There’s no indication of who did the cleanup work.

A hundred feet past down the beach from this spot for two days in a row there were two sets of strange tracks from the waterline to the riverbank. The two sets were about five feet apart. Each set was made up of two parallel lines of marks about three inches apart that looked like a crab had walked tippy-toe. Nothing showed at the bank, like a hole or something eaten. It could have been a single animal entering the water and coming out five feet away. Tracks of that type did not show up again.

Oyster boats and dead crabs are both pretty scarce. Just one boat and no new crab carcasses. However, land crabs, small brown creatures, are starting to appear amongst jumbled concrete pieces of jetties. They’re furtive so quick glances are how you almost see them most of the time.

On the way back off the beach and past the cyprus tree (bald cyprus) we find two lizards in the burned area where the black snakes had been. One is striped and the other is hidden too deep in a fold under the bark to tell. On a previous day a lizard without stripes was on the outside area and it was the same size as this hidden one. They are pretty brazen to hang out at the opening to the snakes’ den….

Walking the Beach #60 (May 07)

 It’s a nice morning with a low tide and slight breeze. The tidal peak was higher than usual and left a wider swath of smooth beach. When the water recedes, if you look closely the individual wave marks are visible in the sand. I call them lap marks.

It’s clear with the usual two contrails. Twice we see two fighter jets fly by overhead at a low altitude. Their sound blends together into a single sound. I guess when the formation of Blue Angles flys by, if you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell how many there were.

A group of about nine vultures fly up from the beach when we arrive. They coast on downriver where we spook several at another feeding spot just over the first jetty. They are cleaning the beach of dead fish that are more frequent of late. Where they feed there may be nothing left, but the sand looks like a flock of birds shuffled about in a tight group. They totally stir up the sand over a square foot or two, but in a shallow manner and once you’ve seen the result it’s possible to tell where they have been. One area makes this evident from the smell of decayed fish, too, but this is the exception.

Crabs that remain on the sand when the tide goes out are not disturbed by birds or animals. Today the males and females are present in equal numbers. One reacts when I try to turn it over and turns out not only to be alive, but in a soft shell state. It wasn’t aggressive unlike the hard shells and apparently can’t use its claws until the shell hardens.

One section of riverbank is sloped rather than the usual vertical and some fifty garden onions has appeared in a loose grouping amongst the kudzu. Each is ready to flower and has a large flower pod at the top of a single 3 to 4 foot high stalk. At first I didn’t know if they were onions or garlic that had been tossed over the bank or been part of a garden that slipped over the edge as the bank eroded away. The soil is solid clay and it gripped the bulbs so well they can’t be pulled up. Later I used a shovel, dug up one and found it to be a large onion.

Deer tracks have appeared in several places, now. And more bare feet marks are visible in the same area where seen previously. Where the sand is fine enough and the right conditions exist even tiny tracks made by beetles can be seen. Sand can be a great recorder of past activity.

The tide changes the beach in different ways. Sometimes a wavy surface rather than flat is left. A couple places further up have had water wash up, then a short ways parallel to the bank and out again leaving small ripples in the sand. It looks like the beach has six-pack abs.

Birds other than the vultures are much less evident now. Only a few swallows are generally at work and a lone eagle or falcon are seen each morning.

This morning there is only one oyster boat at work.

More fish jumping out of the water are apparent. Perhaps the warmer water is responsible.

At the cyprus tree with the burn mark and black snake habitat a lizard is still evident. It scoots off as we walk by. Either it’s a replacement for the one stalked by the snake, or a replacement.

Biting flys are definitely out in force, but only evident when we leave the beach. I’ve a new defensive device, a piece of sticky tape applied to the back of my hat. It traps sixteen in a couple hours of yard work one day. I’ve only found this product at gardensalive.com, but they are just a terrific. Unfortunately, a new strip must be used each day…..

Walking the Beach #46 (May 07)

Yet another cool, overcast day; Saturday, too, so only a short trip on the sand. No boats at all. The view downriver seems more clear perhaps because weekend traffic is less. Big cranes in the shipyard down there are pretty clear, but also stand out more against the gray sky.

A bunch of deer tracks are on the beach. This is the same location where the body of a White Tail buck washed up. No tracks around, then. These reach back to the thirty foot high bank. It has enough slope to be an easy path. It’s right in front of a house, but the house is normally unoccupied, not that discourages the deer. A couple times they’ve crossed our yard, too, at mid-day. Once an old dog living with one of the neighbors even escorted a doe to the river edge. Quite a sight..

The coolness and still air bring out the smells from the woods as we head up the access road. Three pink dogwood trees have lost their blossoms and a white one down the road, too. It smells like some honeysuckle may be in bloom. The greenness is intense now that most everything has leafed totally out and is newly fresh. Even some tree trunks are green from ivy winding its way upward. One spot of only a hundred feet is almost a tunnel of trees and is always noticeably cooler all year round.  Again the cooler weather stops the biting flies from attacking us.

Down the road the blackberry bushes are in bloom. There should be plenty of berries judging from the amount of flowers, but the quality is still unknown and berries can be large or small, bland or tasty. A nieghbor couple we meet on this stretch report that local strawberries are ready for picking at a nearby farm. I mention that blueberries will be available in another month at another farm. They reply that last year the blueberries had very little flavor, like these local blackberries. I’ve only picked blueberries at the farm for two years and have to agree with the neighbors. Still, they are good in pies, smoothies, etc.

A good sized magnolia tree about thirty feet high and fifteen wide is covered with buds, some of which are starting to open. The tree seems to like this location and always produces many blossoms. We’ve one that sits on the riverbank and suffers some each year, I think, from salt in the river water blown ashore by stormy weather.

When we return we can reach the beach at the other end of the neighborhood and the tide is far enough out to allow passage along the river.

A few fresh deer tracks are visible just where we join the beach. Where we head up the bank for our house we find the next door neighbor moving pieces of a large dead pine tree he had cut down and sectioned. He’s assembling a pile that will be burned when weather permits. The felling process a week earlier provided great entertainment for our twenty month old grandson.—-

Walking the Beach #18 (Apr 07)

This is a brisk spring day, clear and breezy. The water is rolling in at a diagonal, reflecting the wind direction, coming from upstream.

Wisteria flowers show up on some shrubbery that leans out from the top of the riverbank. A vine in our front yard shows nothing yet, except for the beginning of new leaves, so the sunnier location on the bank must help. The flowers are a spring feature in the south and Wisteria is a pretty sight, but the vine must be controlled or it can climb all over a house, to the top of tall trees, and dominate the surrounding area. English ivy acts in a similar way. Those two and honeysuckle vines are what one is more likely to see festooning wooded areas alongside a roadway where no control is applied.

A hawk of some sort is perched at the end of the low, broken pier and when it flies off at our approach you can see it is carrying a small fish it had been eating. It was in the same place yesterday. I think it is a red-tailed hawk, which is the likely source of the feather found a week or so back on the beach. We also have peregrine falcons in the area and I can’t say this isn’t a falcon, but hawks are more common. The lighting is from the back of the hawk, so colors can’t be seen.

On down the beach towards the turnaround point where no homes are perched on the bank some new deer tracks are visible in three places along the water. I should watch as we come around the big promontory before a deer would be spooked and bound out of sight. All the tracks are near the water’s edge and you would expect to see a few near the bank or likely access place along the bank. However, enough hard surfaces from piled-up debris and big pieces of hard subsoil or fossils where a deer could have crossed without leaving tracks, so that could be the reason.

Gray, blue and brownish clay chunks along the beach go though a decay process as they dry. It starts with large cracks, then the resulting pieces develop cracks and so on until a large square piece crumbles into a small round mound. The process is like an accelerated aging of mountains into rolling hills. If a chunk is within the tidewater ebb and flow, the clay becomes rounded and wears away to nothing. A third process occurs that produces small windrows of tiny clay pieces the size of coarse sand along the waterline, but if you step onto a windrow the stuff clumps onto your shoe just like stepping in wet, sticky clay. It looks like pieces of clay have dried into mounds then gets swept into the water without dissolving or re-clumping.

On the way down only one contrail is visible, but on the return trip there are three. About the halfway point a small observation helicopter comes over the bank and crosses the river. Then a large Sikorsky comes out from the opposite side and heads downstream. As we head back a third one, a banana-shaped Chinook type, comes out from the opposite shore near the reserve fleet and crosses over towards our side.

No oyster boats are out at all today. The wind picks up and blows into our faces on the way back, but the water doesn’t look very rough from the shore, not enough to make boating impossible, but perhaps enough to affect oystering.

The tidal process was such that the beach has been smoothed into a very uniform ramp about fifteen feet wide for much of the way. It has wiped out the ashes from the treated wood that was burned.

A bird is perched on the dead tree by the low damaged pier. It’s bigger than the hawk and must be a juvenile eagle, but the coloring is strange. Most of his head is white, except for one large black stripe up the side and the body is kind of mottled. I think it must be an eagle in transition. When it takes off you can see it is carrying a fish, just like the hawk. My wife later points out a foot-long dead fish near our front steps and we can see a place on the roof that looks like something landed and slid down. After that a pair of juvenile eagles circle over the house carrying fish so we can only hope this is not something we can expect more of from a growing eagle population.

I find another oyster fossil that looks like it has more growth rings. It only has thirty-eight lines, but is the same thickness as yesterday’s find, about one and a quarter inch. That’s pretty thick even though it’s at a diagonal. A cross section would be about an inch and still a hefty shell compared with what the oyster boats are harvesting nowadays. —-

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. —-