Then There Was a Sunny Beach Day

July 18. V.'s last day. We took the dog and went to Rialto Beach. Mostly dogs can't be in the Park, but they are allowed (on leash) south of Ellen Creek at Rialto. So we recruited him to help do my July beached bird surveys for COASST. On the Rialto Jetty beach survey segment he energetically snuffled all the wrack lines and heaps of seaweed, and if there had been any interesting dead bird parts at all, he'd certainly have found them. (Training him to pick up trash on the return leg only very little successful.)

Instead of beached birds, the theme of the day's citizen science was lots more seaweed than in the previous couple of months, and oh my word vast numbers of people.

Seaweed. Rialto Jetty survey segment (Click for larger image.)

No beached birds on the segment of the survey which ends at Ellen Creek, either. The creek was running. The tide just turned. Incoming waves starting to wash up over the small outgoing flow. Very pleasing.

Ellen Creek, Rialto Beach. (Click for larger image.)

Then we continued on to the end of the beach (poor dog had to stay in the car for this part of the day). Tide was coming in, and (truth) anyway I never intended us to get through the Hole-in-the-Wall. I just wanted us to arrive there among the glorious array of rocks and waves. So she could see it. So I could be there.

North end of Rialto Beach (Click for larger image.)

We even got to tidepool a little, V. found an anemone and a bunch of limpets resting happily in a little pool. Later we saw the only beached critter of the day, a starfish. We threw him back, next to some rocks the waves were beginning to cover; but it was not likely to help... We continued on down the beach in beautiful light with increasing waves now coming in. Yes.

Beached star, Rialto Beach. (Click for larger image.)Rialto Beach, looking south after crossing Ellen Creek. (Click for larger image.)

Garnet Sand

Went to the ocean on Saturday. My houseguest of the moment, my old friend LB, stayed in the car or wandered about and did just what she pleased; so I did too; please myself, I mean. It was dark-cloudy, then brighter, with subtle light effects my poor little camera is not up to. Golden. The light in the picture below should be golden on the water. Ambled north solo along the beach as far as where Ellen Creek flows into the ocean. Then ambled back. Stopped and read for a while. That's the best, really. I be there, I get lost in a story, I wake out of the story and I am still there.

Rialto Beach, December 3, 2011, at a brighter moment (Click for larger image.)

When it works it is deeply soothing, I smile all the way home. (This is different from ecstasy moments, which are rare and I can't remember the last time I had any, a couple of years at least. Don't need 'em either, as long as I get to entirely stop for a while in the sound of the waves.)

Rialto Beach at Ellen Creek, December 3, 2011 (soundscape for Cee)Rialto Beach, more or less from where I sat reading (soundscape for Cee)

The place along the beach where the garnet sand sometimes appears put on its subtle show. A gull posed. And on our way west, the elk were out on Beaver Prairie.

... (Click for larger image.)
... (Click for larger image.)Elk on Beaver Prairie. Resolved: No more waiting. I must shop for a new camera, no matter what else is going on: one which will reach out to the elk, ... (Click for larger image.)

PS I did want to mention as I have before that whenever I am there at Ellen Creek, I think of it as the Raymond Carver point—"Where water comes together with other water"— though he made that phrase for the place where Morse Creek flows into the Strait of Juan de Fuca; and that I always look at the modest creek flow and think of Ivan Doig's story in This House of Sky of getting swept into the ocean, right there, by a winter storm tide. (Hope the link works. You're welcome.)

I Talk to the Trees (But They Don't Listen to Me)

Expedition to the Outer Coast in vile weather. Actually JL wanted to take me up showshoeing on Hurricane Ridge, but forecast was for weather continuing to be windy and the temperature above freezing days, frozen crust at night. So we went to the ocean instead. I called the elk at all three potential elk spots. "He-e-e-er-r-r-e elky elky elky." No elk. It rained all the way west, sometimes hard. JL tried the technique of speaking optimisitcally about sunshine. Didn't work. I tried being firm, addressed a remark to the sky, "OK, that's enough, just turn it off now." That didn't work either.

So there we were on Rialto Beach in our rainsuits, the wind blowing the rain at us. The beach was clean (JL picked up the only piece of marine debris we saw, a plastic bag), lots of changes in where the logs are and the distribution of sand and gravel on the surface. The camera spent most of the day zipped inside my clothes two layers down. Occasionally I turned my back to the wind and tried to get a picture of, um, not a whole lot. Some people were walking with umbrellas. Should have done.

Rialto Beach and (barely) James Island, March 2, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

There was so much rainfall a temporary creek was running across the beach, difficult to behave as it it were real water. Got my boots wet crossing it. We walked as far as Ellen Creek, then turned around. Ellen Creek was running really full, certainly not crossable unless you were going to wet-log-walk at the back of the beach. There were lots of gulls, and we each glimpsed an eagle who emerged from the clouds and then back in again.

Ellen Creek Running Full, March 2, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

We decided to go around to La Push for lunch, but found the restaurant not open; so we sat for a while on the point overlooking First Beach where you can see the whales when the whales are there to see, long about April. Heard sea lions barking, but didn't see them. It was still raining.

Overlooking First Beach. (Click for larger image.)

The weather slowly lightened as we drove back east. It was still gray and the streets very wet when we got back to Port Angeles, but a couple of hours later it looked like this out the window:

... (Click for larger image.)

Thank you anyway, Olympic National Park.

Where Skates, Rays and Chimeras Fit Into the World

Dark on the beach on Friday. It was so gray and dim that I kept thinking that dark patch of sand over there, those cobbles in the hollow, that blackish cut end of driftwood, anything might be oiled. Not. I even sniffed the end of the log. No oil smell, of course not. The oil has not come this way. As usual, there were no beached birds at all. Nothing there but beauty, a dark undistinguished beauty.

Looking North from Ellen Creek (Click for larger image.)James Island from Rialto Jetty, February 11, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

What I think of as the Raymond Carver point, where(ever) on the beach that Ellen Creek comes together with the Pacific Ocean, had shifted back south again from its temporary northward position last month. A couple of eagles flew by just there, very vocal, and landed in a tree a little ways behind the beach along the course of the creek. They went on talking to each other for a few minutes. Gulls. A few seastars washed up in the surf line as the tide came in. A skate carcass behind a log; images: (1)(2).

Ellen Creek on February 11, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

I just wasted at least an hour trying to make clear to myself where skates fit into the world; who could resist 'skates, rays and chimeras'? I'll spare you all but this (since you probably don't care):
          Class Osteichthyes (bony fish)
               + Subclass Actinopterygii (ray-finned fish)
               + Subclass Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish)
          Class Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish)
               o Subclass: Elasmobranchii (sharks, skates, and rays)
                     * Superorder: Batoidea (skates and rays)
                     * Superorder : Selachimorpha (sharks)
                o Subclass: Holocephali (chimaeras)

It didn't rain until I was reaching for my notebook to record the end time of the second survey. My pen was missing and I looked down in case I'd dropped it right in that thought moment; there were raindrops on the cobbles. For the record, since this was a COASST survey, I will mention that the last time I found a beached bird was two large immature gulls on September 5, 2010; and before that, not since the end of the wreck, on 11/14/09.

And yes, this was the day that Egypt's revolution had its climax. I left home very late, because I was watching AlJazeera English online. And they were on my mind all day, those millions of people who went to the streets and turned the world upside down almost entirely peaceably. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, millions of Egyptians. Thank you, Egypt.

Wings Of

I went to do my regular survey for COASST on Saturday. The weekend before, during the big swell, there had been improbable amounts of foam in some places but on 11/14 almost all of it had been washed away or, if blown above the tides, reduced away to a grainy pale brownish residue. On Rialto Jetty there was some notably new drift (those bright red-alder trunks really stand out), the gulls were very active both over the river and over the ocean, the foam coming in was mostly the clean white stuff that sinks right in with a fizzy noise like bubble water shaken up and opened too fast--

Fresh drift, Rialto Jetty, 11.14.2009... (Click for larger image.)

and I had one beached bird. The wings of. (Well, yeah, with a bit of breastbone and some connecting stuff, but basically if it's not a measurable and identifiable part, it doesn't count.) With only wings, all there was to measure and write down was the wing chord, and all I had to go on for identification in the field guide was the wing table. That part— unshipping the pack, laying out the tools, measuring, writing down— doesn't take very long. Flipping through the book, looking up each bird whose wings were the right size, changing my mind, measuring the one measure over and over (absolutely definitely 31 centimeters every time), thinking some more, sitting on a log and mumbling to myself ("No! This mantle is definitely not dark!") is what takes all the time :-) I decided it was a northern fulmar.

Northern fulmar, wings of. (Click for larger image.)

For COASST, the formal ID photos: 769b, 769c, 769d, 769e.

When I got home, illustrations in Sibley of the light form of northern fulmar, and photos on the web, gave me a little confidence. OK, then. Northern fulmar. A bird that lives on the open ocean. OK.

On the Ellen Creek beach segment, the shore was mostly swept clean; plainly the waves in some places washed right over the berm, sometimes all the smaller wood and even the pebbles pushed up past the really big logs, and nothing at all on the sand. Some small accumulations left here and there. In one place there was (part of) a skate carcass. No dead or distressed birds. At Ellen Creek itself there was some smaller wood, but most of it had been carried away.

Ellen Creek, Rialto Beach, 11/14/2009 (Click for larger image.)

On the way home I took the side road that loops up onto Quillayute Prairie, and there were elk in the field to the east of the Quillayute airport. I was driving along thinking about the eagles I saw apparently squabbling over Lake Crescent the previous weekend, and the seal I saw off Ediz Hook, and how we respond to wildlife, and about the phrases 'charismatic megafauna' and 'marquee animals'; and there by golly right out the window were the Olympics' marquee animals, munching peaceably in a field, miles and miles from the contiguous protected lands of the Park...

Elk near the Quillayute airport (Click for larger image.)

Summer Mode

The days are very long. Sunday afternoon headed west, June survey for dead birds on the outer coast. It's the season of 'June gloom, Juneuary, or tomato hell... whatever' as Cliff Mass writes, and I love it. Even when it's sunny inland, the marine layer keeps the oceanside gray, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday it was raining all over.

Cloudy, south end of the beach at Rialto Jetty, June 12, 2011 (Click for larger image.)Rain, looking north from near Ellen Creek, Rialto Beach, June 12, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

Unofficial report for COASST: no dead birds, lots of other beach matters to report: There was a deer on the beach, only the second time I've seen one there; by the time I'd whipped the camera out from under the poncho, he was walking away towards the drift. Ellen Creek was in summer mode, not running across the beach but just seeping out through the berm. Two black oystercatchers were on the sand, then flew to a rock (we don't usually have any shore birds at all at Rialto). The sea was very flat. Flights of pelicans out at sea. Some sea stars & bryozoans in the wrack, but mostly various kinds of kelp.

Deer on the Beach (Click for larger image.)Black oystercatcher (Click for wider view.)

What appeared at first to be a piece of log shaped like a seal was in fact a dead marine mammal. I'll confer with my Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary mentor tomorrow because— as is often the case when left on my own with a dead creature and a data sheet— I couldn't identify it even though it should be obvious. It was way too small for a sea lion, but it had ear flaps so it couldn't be a harbor seal. I had to leave blank the ID fields at the top of the Marine Mammal Stranding Report.

The bryozoan (moss animal) Flustrella (appearances notwithstanding, a colonial animal) (Click for larger image.)Wrack. Ellen Creek beach segment, Rialto Beach (Click for larger image.)

Windshield wipers all the way home. :-)

PS Lovely interactive graphic about summer and winter beach profiles, part of a very instructive website from the Coastal Morphology Group, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Definitely One of Those Days

Yesterday. Sunny low tide afternoon.

Rialto Beach, March 6th. (Click for larger image.)

Obviously, it was a day to go to the Hole-in-the-Wall. Even on a weekday there were a sufficiency of walkers. People with longer legs could just cross Ellen Creek with a running jump, people with better balance tightrope-walked on the drift at the back of the beach. I took off boots and waded at the mouth, where it spread out a little and was shallowest. Then on to the north end of the beach, where the tide was ever lower and the sea stacks put on their usual show.

... (Click for larger image.)

Didn't go quite up to the Wall, but stopped just there at the end of the beach;
sat on a log, back against another log, in the sunshine; reading and listening and watching.

What I Saw from There (Click for larger image.)

Boots off again on the way back, to wade the creek again. Sitting on the sand to put them back on, I thought I could stay exactly right there, from exactly that moment on. Why would anyone ever leave?

Sitting on the sand by Ellen Creek.Direct link, for R.

November Beach Survey

There are eagles around. One over the highway near Bear Creek, where in fact I think he must live because he's often there. Two very vocal eagles over the beach near the leaning ghost tree, four over the river (two mature, two juvenile).

James Island from Rialto Jetty, November 14, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

This time the Rialto Jetty beach segment was completely swept clean of either wrack or litter, and it was the Ellen Creek beach segment that had wrack, a mix of seaweed and animals. There was not much marine debris, except along one stretch south of the ghost tree there were a number of plastic bottles which had been nearly reduced to stiff lace.

Fresh Wrack Swept Back Among the Drift Logs (Click for larger image.)

Not A Clue. A Sponge Maybe??? (Click for larger image.)

On the return leg of the survey you count human traces. Coming back from Ellen Creek, 18 people on the clicker and two dogs, though for much of the walk the beach was doing a good imitation of being completely empty. By the time I was coming back from the Rialto Jetty beach segment, no people no dogs, the first time ever that I have put 0/0 in my survey notebook. It was raining again at that point, but that doesn't usually keep people off the Park's premier drive-to beach.

The Leaning Tree Hasn't Gone Over Yet (Click for larger image.)

No dead birds to write up. If there were any, either the set of the waves had carried them away or they were buried under the sand and pebbles.

Walkers (Click for larger image.)

Empty Beach (Click for larger image.)

P.S. for COASST: on the Rialto Jetty beach segment there was a small amount of persistent foam of the sort that leaves a gritty brownish residue. It was just to the south of the access from the parking lot. Nowhere else. Click for larger images.

  

Across Ellen Creek and Through the Arch

Thanksgiving. There was a minus tide right at sunset, so the tide was falling all afternoon. Surprisingly many people apparently have the habit of reading tidetables, and assessing the weather; and a fair number of them decided to spend their bright cold Thanksgiving going through the arch called Hole-in-the-Rock, at the end of Rialto Beach...Looking back from beyond the arch...
M. tidepooling
Rock grained like wood, wood pieces heaped like stones

Ample opportunities to get wet. Crossing Ellen Creek, falling in a tidepool, crossing the creek back again. There were anemones, sea stars (including a bright orange baby one smaller than a 50-cent piece), a nudibranch, a crab I never got a good look at on account of toppling into the adjacent pool. M. emailed this morning, "The sea star that was to your left after you sat on the rock is a Pacific Henricia, and the nudibranch (which could be a doris) is not pictured in any of my books, but some other great ones are! No picture of that exquisite flat green swimming worm. The crab you fell for is a mimulus foliatus."

What? Oh I'm fine. Plenty of stiff bent parts, and I'm mortified. Nothing that won't mend, except the getting old part.

OCNMS 70

Me and my COASST backpack**, whose number (written on it in black marker) is OCNMS 70**, did our first survey at Rialto yesterday. I have two beach segments, both short: 'Rialto Jetty', from the parking lot to where the rip rap meets the water and cuts off beach access; and 'Ellen Creek', from the parking lot to the mouth of the creek, where god knows I have been often enough before (1)(2). The headline news is: no dead birds. By the statistics, there rarely are (1)(2).

So when I came down on the beach I first went south along the jetty, trying to make my path a wavy line as described in the protocol, outbound along the bottom of the beach in case the dropping tide wanted to leave me a dead bird to identify, measure, and photograph; and returning up by the drift, examining the smallish and drying piles of kelp and looking among the wood litter.

For my very first official act, I accidentally wrote on the Writes-in-the-Rain version of the form instead of the plain paper one. Oopsie; it was overcast at that point, but certainly not gonna be wet. I recorded weather (clouds), oil (none), wood present (yes, medium size, continuous, high), wrack present (thick, patchy). On the return leg you count people (7). I added to the comments one shorebird, who seemed to be a turnstone but I didn't get a good look, eagles over the river on the other side of the jetty, small bits of trash, a bottle or two. Next time I have to bring a trash bag.

Wrack, Rialto Jetty beach segment, May 16, 2009 (Click for larger image.)

Back at the starting point, I continued north to Ellen Creek. By then the sun was out. I managed to use the right form for this one. Weather (sun), oil (none), wood present (medium, continuous, high), wrack present (thin, patchy). 56 people, 3 dogs. In the comments, 'at least two logs whose DBH is greater than I am tall, but most smaller; very little wrack.'

22 of those 56 people appeared to be a scout troop returning from camping up the coast. It was hard to count the people, I'd get distracted and lose track of how many, or whether this foursome looks familiar because I saw them on the way out when I wasn't counting (count them) or is a group that passed me earlier (already counted).

It was downright hot by then. I went back to the car to throw away all the trash I'd picked up, switch packs, get food; and meant to go out on the beach again. The tide was coming back; I could have put on my tennies and cooled off by getting wet. But I was sundazzled and sleepy. Decided to go home.

**P.S. COASST is Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team. OCNMS is Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.