Easter was wonderful!
Apr. 6th, 2018 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
songbird_beccaCross-posted to facebook:
I had an amazing day for biodiversity last Sunday-chamaenerion and I spent the afternoon into the night at Great Island in Wellfleet, hiking 4.1 miles to the tip at the end and back (total ~8 miles)
We got in at around 3:30, when the tide had been going out for a bit more than an hour. As we descended on the path from woods to water, we spotted a group of brants hanging out with a couple of Canada geese.chamaenerion then spotted an otter flolloping around near the shore. Definitely an otter. Had a little otter face and a little otter tail and everything! In the distance, we spotted common mergansers and bufflehead ducks. Hiking along the sandy dunes, we took a branch off to the right through some grasslands on a lark.
.... to find a pair of horned larks hopping about in the grass and singing melodiously.
We moved through the pitch pine forests and sandy dunes and isthmuses and once we reaches the last bit of beach we saw red breasted mergansers and eiders swimming near each other. We felt sad as we passed the decomposing and dismembered corpse of an adult seal and then a fresher seal pup corpse.
As we kept walking towards the end of the land that is only accessible during low tide, we saw a bunch of gulls off to the side and what we assumed was a gull on a grassy hill. As we got closer, it didn’t resolve into a gull shape... it was a snowy owl!!!
We didn’t actually go to the very end of the land because there were some harbor seals resting there and we didn’t want to disturb them. We did spy on them through binoculars though, and they were super cute!
We watched the sun set over the water. Great Island is one of the few places you can do that on the East Coast.
On our way back with the tide out we passed a number of bodies, of loons, a muskrat, and for me the saddest of all, a dead dolphin that had washed up on shore. It had “039dj” spray painted onto its side. It was dark and we were looking at it with a flashlight. At first we thought it might be an artistic buoy or sculpture that had washed up on the beach. It looked almost unreal, like someone had tarred over its skin to preserve it on the beach. I wonder what the story was there.
Update: Authorities tag deceased beached marine mammals with numbers and letters when they survey and necropsy them to indicate their stage in processing.
I had an amazing day for biodiversity last Sunday-
chamaenerion and I spent the afternoon into the night at Great Island in Wellfleet, hiking 4.1 miles to the tip at the end and back (total ~8 miles)We got in at around 3:30, when the tide had been going out for a bit more than an hour. As we descended on the path from woods to water, we spotted a group of brants hanging out with a couple of Canada geese.
chamaenerion then spotted an otter flolloping around near the shore. Definitely an otter. Had a little otter face and a little otter tail and everything! In the distance, we spotted common mergansers and bufflehead ducks. Hiking along the sandy dunes, we took a branch off to the right through some grasslands on a lark..... to find a pair of horned larks hopping about in the grass and singing melodiously.
We moved through the pitch pine forests and sandy dunes and isthmuses and once we reaches the last bit of beach we saw red breasted mergansers and eiders swimming near each other. We felt sad as we passed the decomposing and dismembered corpse of an adult seal and then a fresher seal pup corpse.
As we kept walking towards the end of the land that is only accessible during low tide, we saw a bunch of gulls off to the side and what we assumed was a gull on a grassy hill. As we got closer, it didn’t resolve into a gull shape... it was a snowy owl!!!
We didn’t actually go to the very end of the land because there were some harbor seals resting there and we didn’t want to disturb them. We did spy on them through binoculars though, and they were super cute!
We watched the sun set over the water. Great Island is one of the few places you can do that on the East Coast.
On our way back with the tide out we passed a number of bodies, of loons, a muskrat, and for me the saddest of all, a dead dolphin that had washed up on shore. It had “039dj” spray painted onto its side. It was dark and we were looking at it with a flashlight. At first we thought it might be an artistic buoy or sculpture that had washed up on the beach. It looked almost unreal, like someone had tarred over its skin to preserve it on the beach. I wonder what the story was there.
Update: Authorities tag deceased beached marine mammals with numbers and letters when they survey and necropsy them to indicate their stage in processing.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-07 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 05:27 pm (UTC)