Low Tide

Today we had a chilly start.  It went well below freezing last night, but by the time we got ready to walk it was already up to 32.8 F!  As you can see it was clear and sunny.  There was a 10+ mph north wind, enough to sting your eyes, and make them weep.

We had an exceptionally low tide this morning too.  After I got home, I captured a shot of the NOAA storm surge site for Solomon's, which is a pretty fair representation of our tides.  You can see the tide drop from extremely high to extremely low over the course of two days, driven largely by the winds.

 Come on!  Hurry up, lazy monkeys!

Low tide exposed the deer carcass that we saw last week, and a couple of Turkey Vultures (seen here) and one Black Vulture were picking over the remains.  Skye ran them off, but then decided it wasn't as tasty as she expected.

The low tide exposed lots of stuff...  Here is an extinct scallop, Chesapectens sp. lying in the debris.

Surprisingly, the sharks tooth hunting wasn't that good.  Between us, we got about 20 teeth, including this Mako that I found, and a small and badly broken Megalodon that Georgia found.  This "Mako" shark is likely a precursor to the current Great White Shark.  Most Mako teeth are much grayer than this one.  It appears to depend on the color of the sediment they are embedded in.

The Tundra Swan family.  If you click on the pic to see it enlarges, you can see how the wind was ruffling their head and tail feathers.











The Bald Eagles were sitting together way down the beach (past the swans).  When I got close, as usual, one flew while the other stayed put (apparently it's figured out that we aren't going to climb after it).  I got this slightly blurry picture as the skittish one moved further down the beach.

Just a cool pattern of ripples in the sand.