a windy day at the beach

Friday April 19 Shift

Second shift of the season because the previous Friday got rained on.


Coffee of the Day: Tanzania Peaberry
Bird of the Day: long-tailed duck
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: a battered cooking pot full of seaweed
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge beach: 12 pairs, Sandy Point: 2 pairs, number actually seen by me: zero.

Looking South -- 8:00 AM

I could hear large numbers of long-tailed ducks calling loudly as I walked toward the beach on the access road. The clamor emerging from the fog sounded as if they were big and very close by. Of course, I couldn't see them or much of anything else more than a few yards off shore because of the fog.

Looking North -- 8:00 AM

Aside from the long-tailed ducks, bird life was pretty quiet for most of the morning.  I only spoke with two visitors and both of them were very nice and supportive of saving the piping plover.  I walked the wrack line as usual and found an unusual amount of trash. Weird trash.

Seaweed and Nylon Mesh Stew?

By far the weirdest thing in the wrack was a cooking pot about the size of a dutch oven filled with seaweed, rope, and orange nylon mesh. Chowder? Bouillabaisse?

The Inevitable Hooksett Disc

Someday I will stop finding Hooksett discs on the beach. Really. It will happen. Actually I'm waiting for some strange species of hermit crab to evolve a need for plastic sewage treatment discs. Meanwhile, I only found a few of them. Most of the trash in the wrack was plastic. Many of the plastic items were not the usual plastic junk though. Many items besides the cooking pot looked like they may have come from one of the houses that fell in.

Plumbing Supply?

I found something that looked like part of the flush assembly for a toilet, a plastic triangle, plastic salad utensils, and much more. 

Triangle

Big Plastic Fork

The wind picked up significantly and changed direction. I was wearing two windbreakers and trying to position myself out of the wind without much success. As the wind picked up, the sky started to clear and the long-tailed ducks stopped calling. They were still out there, the same distance off shore, but very quiet.

Looking South -- 11:30 AM

By 11:30 the sky was blue and the temperature was about 10 degrees warmer. A couple of northern gannets appeared through a break in the clouds, very close to shore. They put on a brief show of fancy diving but didn't stay long.

Looking North -- 11:30 AM