‘Well, Hello There!’

‘Who are you?’

‘Let me get a closer look.’

‘Got anything to eat in those pockets?’

  The friendly donkeys were in a big paved parking lot of an abandoned business that we often drive by. There never were donkeys here before! 

  As we were leaving, a man opened a gate and began leading the donkeys away down the road on leashes. 

  Maybe he needed a temporary parking place for his donkeys??? 

Who knows!

The tulip trees say we are done with winter. 

  I drew you a little picture of where I’ve mostly been the last couple weeks. It’s not fun!  Back to physical therapy and the Epley Maneuver again tomorrow.  

The Beach at Sunrise

   The winter beach is a special place, swept clean by raging Nor’easters, inviting only the hardiest souls to enjoy its pleasures and treasures. Tourists are scarce and it’s not so hard to find times we can have this island beach all to ourselves. 

  

Remains of an old jetty appear in the sand as daylight moves in and the tide moves out.  

 To the north is a peninsula and other beaches with a sandbar between. At lowest tide you can sometimes walk from the island across to the peninsula, exploring the creatures left behind in the tide pools. 

  This morning the sandbar is covered with hundreds of birds — mostly brown pelicans, gulls, and cormorants. Too far away to identify the gulls with my binoculars. Oh, well.

   Wouldn’t you like to own that house on the point (at least until the next hurricane pays a visit anyway)? 

  Look what the tide has brought up along the old jetty: several overturned starfish, stuck there as the water receded. 

  I moved several of them back into the water, hoping to give them another chance at survival.

  The tubular structures you can see on the arms of this overturned starfish are what starfish use to move. Eyes are located at the end of each arm.

  There are over 2000 species of starfish in the world’s oceans. I was surprised to know that they even exist in the polar regions.

  I think it is common knowledge that starfish can regenerate lost arms, but did you know, they don’t all have five arms? Some can have many more than that, some fewer. This guy, found quite far up the beach from the water’s edge, only had four. 

 

  The tide was coming in and I passed many more of this same starfish species. We see many small gray ones at different times of the year (3-4 inches in diameter) but the ones on the beach today were bigger, 7 inches or so. There are species that grow up to 11 lbs!

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

❤️❤️❤️