Thursday, February 12, 2009

Coasst Survey - See what we found!

This weekend we went on our monthly survey of Boyscout beach looking for dead birds. We timed the tide perfectly - getting there just as it was going back out for the day. The wrack line and beach were clear of snow and from the high tide mark to the water was maybe 20 to 25 feet when we started out instead of what it is at the low tide between 50-75 feet.

We didn't find any dead birds but we saw live ones! Raven, Eagle, Gulls, Ducks, and we heard some songbirds while walking on the trail to get to the beach.

But look at what we did find:

A fishing plug


A beautiful silk rose


Along with the above we also collected : a cut-up plastic 5-gallon bucket, 2 unmarked tins of "food" that we thought might be salmon but turned out to be cat food, a plastic pop bottle, a plastic liquor bottle (the small size like you would get on a airplane), misc. plastic bags, a wire band like you'd get on a load of lumber, a glass pint liquor bottle (whiskey), a really smoothly-sanded aluminum can, and a couple of candy wrappers.

But was was really strange was the spiders. As we were approaching the beach we started to see a few spiders along the pathway.


And the we spotted several more. They all seemed to be heading away from the water and towards to trees. I know its hard to tell but all these black spots (minus the black spots that are on your monitor) are spiders. There were maybe a 100 spiders all slowly walking in the same direction.


Maybe they were a new hatch of spiders that got blown away from the trees in the wind?
Maybe they had been feeding on the wrack in the high tide (it was about a 19 foot tide)?
Maybe they were just out for a Sunday walk, like we were?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Ia m disturbed at your observation of the spiders. It seems they CAN communicate, and are most likely plotting to overthrow us very soon.

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