It’s freezing but warmer than yesterday mainly because the air is almost still so we face very little wind chill. We had about an inch of snow a few days ago. Temperatures are staying low and reaching the high 20’s some nights, but warm enough so hardly any snow remains. The day before the snow we had periods of rain and sleet with dry periods as we walked. Snow came late the next day, so we avoided a walk that weather.
The cold hasn’t prevented watermen from harvesting oysters. Today the usual eight tongers are mid river and the small dredger manned by two guys is close to shore near the turnaround point. One day eighteen mid-river tongers appeared, the maximum so far.
Izzy is wearing a fleece-lined jacket that hampers movement some and he may not like, but on sunless days, like today, he needs it. Sometimes it prevents his passage through beached brush and fallen tree tops and once pulled it right off as he passed through. Today I carry him over a couple spots but on the way back remove the coat so he can make his own way. A short ways later, though, he started shivering proving the coat’s value, and it went back on.
Water weeping out of the bank has formed groups of icicles one to two feet long at a half dozen places. The cold also makes nuggets and baseball-sized clumps of soil – mostly clay – break loose leaving a sprinkling along the base. A few pieces roll several feet towards the river leaving individual tracks in softer sand.
A single black rubber glove with yellow cuff that washed up a couple weeks ago may have a mate. It may just be moving up and down the beach or a pair that haven’t been visible on the same day, so I have to watch closer to see if there’s a right and a left or just the one each time one appears. Such challenges are found on the beach!
Sand covered the small upside-down bathtub that became visible near the beginning of our walk so for about a year there have only been a few days that it was visible. Sand has also smoothed over most rubble and debris, the clumps of broken limestone, blocks of clay, concrete and shells. Some of the excelsior material that must be a form of water weed seems to float to the top of the sand, but fallen leaves and even most of the persistent tulip tree seeds are now gone. Leaves from cypress trees lasted the longest and migrated only about fifty yards downstream, but are now mostly gone.
We had a few days of high-high tides with some wind awhile back that deposited a wheel with tire amongst tree branches and trunk we crawl under just before the promontory. All the other discarded tires we see lack that center part. This one looks to be from a tractor or commercial truck.
Bird life is erratic in this weather. Small birds, the sparrow, wrens and finches, are around in small numbers in the brush at the top of the bank, but herons and eagles are rare sights. On the other hand the pelican that landed near the small dredger a few days ago was unusual, and every few days a flock of twenty to 100 canada geese appear on the water. This morning an unusual sight was a group of eight small water birds near the shore that dived as a group. The cloud cover and low sun reduced the light level so the birds appear to be black. They weren’t unusual except that after seeing them and then finding them suddenly gone when you looked made made you wonder where they went until they suddenly popped back up.
