May 21, 2009

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A lovely sunny day, but strong winds had blown sand over most everything in recent tide lines; didn't find any dead birds, for instance. I did stop to pick up a small, deep orange agate; when I reached in my pocket to drop it there, I felt something else--another agate, this one larger and cream-colored. I must have dropped it there the last time I wore these pants to the beach. Reminded of the movie Groundhog Day--so many wonderful days at Mile 157, all blending together, even repeating themselves. I watched an osprey pluck something from the water's edge--I'm wondering if it was a sanderling, as there had been a big flock there moments before, and this thing looked round and fat and small, not slender like a fish. Probably saw some 200 sanderlings, in several groups, and a fair number of gulls, and one small group of ducks of some kind, winging north over the waves. At one point I saw several very nonchalant gulls and a single turkey vulture just standing on the beach near one another, "acting natural," which naturally raised my suspicions. I walked toward them and found what they were hoping I'd ignore: the tattered remains of a good-sized fish they'd been working on. The spine seemed to be cartiledge, not bone, and it had a thin forked black tail and what looked like slightly spiny black dorsal fins. No idea what it was--something common, or something rare?