Foggy beach walk

I love a sunrise walk on the beach, but we had many days of fog during my recent time on Cape Cod.

The beach has become far shorter due to the recent break south of the Chatham Lighthouse in March this year. It used to be about 90 minutes round trip, now is under half that. The shoreline shown by Google Maps does NOT come very close to that shown by their satellite view (internet)...

which does not come close to the android Google Maps satellite (shows the March break), And no, I did not park there, merely marked it as the end of the dry sand so I could check the beach extension on my next visit.

which does not come very close to reality: geologic time runs very very fast on the barrier beaches: chart-makers throw up their hands and simply print "Use Local Knowledge".


As one walks down the beach, the sound of the waves that make their way in from the ocean becomes louder and louder, a gentle susurrus.

After a few minutes, eye-glasses become unusable as the gathering minuscule droplets of water make seeing foggy, then impossible. The dark grayness of twilight lightens to a pinkness, telling one that the sun is, indeed, rising.

And sometimes the gray will close in again and sometimes it will clear away and leave behind a glorious sunrise.

The most recent time I walked, I photographed razor clams.

I have never before found them sitting partly exposed, but this seems to be the way things are at this particular break in the beach. Most curious. I usually can collect one every few minutes, but could collect a few per minute here.

Is the sand too dry for them to burrow down? Is it too unstable for them to maintain a burrow they can slip down easily and does burrowing through sand frequently take too much energy? Curious.


What to do when the beach is gray?
Go ahead, walk there anyway!

Curiosity on the beach

Please be warned that this post involves digestive processes some may find disgusting. Skip it if you do...


Walking on the fine white sand of Caribbean beaches, it amuses me to think that it is almost entirely composed of coral that has been chewed, swallowed, and, um, "processed" through parrot fish.

I had thought nothing like this existed on our Cape Cod beaches, other than some shells smashed by seagulls (often on rocky beaches, but sometimes on a favorite rock like this one)...

but this does not involve passage through a creature.

However, a few weeks ago, on a sailing adventure to Little Sipson Island in Pleasant Bay,

I found small piles of waste filled with the broken shells of blue mussels.

Eyes opened, I looked at the beach again and noticed spots, small blue patches where these piles used to be...

and the sand itself has small bits of blue shell everywhere. I know that the few-percent contribution to these beaches pales beside the nearly 100% Caribbean fraction, but still pretty darned interesting.

One question that springs to mind is what species did this? Gulls? Cormorants? (A bit of quick research brings up eider ducks, corroborated by the fact that we DID find about ten mummified remains on the island that could easily have been eiders.)

One final question that springs to mind is whether these little piles are more like owl pellets, regurgitated stuff too troublesome to run through the normal one-way digestive tract, or whether it did, indeed, make the passage. The web says eiders do not regurgitate, so that leaves only one path, as it were...

So much fun to go the beach with curious eyes!

Surf clams!

Far too long since my last post, but life sometimes gets far too complex. Now I'm back in Michigan. Cynthia picked me up in Grand Rapids yesterday and drove to her sister's place for an errand, where I walked the fields, finding Japanese beetles and monarch butterflies while looking for the last clinging black raspberries. But enough about MI, let's look back at a bit of MA!

Euell Gibbons described surf clams in his book, "Stalking the Blue-eyed Scallop", as large (I've often seen ones measuring 6") and rather useless (yes, I'm paraphrasing), tossing almost all the meat or using it as bait, saying only the adductor (Yes, I spelled that correctly, thank you spellcheck!) muscles are worth eating. He also mentioned that sometimes one will find none, sometimes a few, sometimes buckets... in the same spot..

According to family legend, my uncle once came across a plethora of these clams, filled all pockets etc, and tried to make his way back through the rising tide. Along the way he realized that he had to choose between losing the clams and losing his life and, after some consideration, made the painful decision to drop the clams. *grin*

This brings us to last week, when we managed to pile all immediate available family (plus one cousin and a dog) into the Rhodes 19 sailboat and set out in light breezes,

past lounging and stinking seals, to the outer bar where we dug steamer clams, then stopped at a favorite sand bar for swimming. The kids had soon found a few surf clams.

Alerted, we soon found more with our feet ("treading for clams") and collected them into a tide pool.

Rather interesting critters...

We could easily have collected bushels, but why be greedy? After taking pics, we scattered them and gathered to watch the last ten or so dig their way rather swiftly to safety.

We brought two clams with us and piled back into the sailboat, resting figures covering the bow as we glided home, sliding swiftly along with gentle breeze and strong current.

Another day seized! So many delightful moments....