Saturday, January 16, 2010

Watching the Tide Come in On a Sunny Day

There was WAY too much water for parading up and down the beach. The low had been the higher low, and the tide was already halfway back up, washing the edge of the drift. Arriving an hour earlier wouldn't have made a difference. So without guilt I changed plans and did 'sitting on logs in the sunshine watching the tide come in' instead. Which was of course what I wanted anyway. Ditched the bird pack and went back out with snacks and a book to read. A woman in an aqua windbreaker was doing sun salutations up behind a big log. There was one eagle. Gulls and crows and little flitty birds were all elsewhere. The big big log had moved since last month, and there's a lot more medium wood than there had been. At highest tide, some quite impressive breakers. I'd been sitting there reading about bubblenet feeding of humpback whales, got absorbed in the book and nearly neglected to move to a position further up the foreshore until an arriving wave reminded me.

The tides are not going to be different enough tomorrow or Monday. (Why only an hour's change in two days? Need to understand tides better.) Much as I love being a citizen scientist and producing data points for COASST's records, I think I'll just wait a week for the tides to be right, and do my beached-bird survey next Saturday regardless of weather.

The camera's full of pictures and little videos. But it's always the same place...