The First Day of Winter at the Beach

Skye and I left Georgia at home and went down around 11:30 AM to catch as much of the low tide as we could. Another really nice day for winter, cool, low 40s but clear and still.

We managed to get around the logs up past Matoaka Cottages, and up to Western Shore (about 2 miles). The Tundra (aka Whistling) Swans are up in the shallow waters behind the sand bar up there. Skye really wants a swan.

The crater in the shallow water is a place where the swans dig in the sand for food.

Tundra Swans wintering in Chesapeake Bay feed almost exclusively on clams that they dislodge from the mud. But it can be challenging to enjoy a peaceful meal: often the swan has to fend off a Ring-billed, Herring, or Greater Black-backed gull that swoops in to grab a clam from the swan’s bill—a successful tactic in about half of these “kleptoparasitic” encounters.

Not a great day for sharks teeth; I only found 7. The larger is an extinct White Shark tooth, commonly called a "Mako", not a particularly big one, but a nice one. The smaller one is more unusual, a Cow Shark upper tooth, near the front of the mouth.