Saturday, February 05, 2011

A Gray Day

How many words do you know for gray? How about grau, gris, grigio, grijs, cenza? (I confess, I had to look them up myself) After driving 10 hours in the rain yesterday, we arrived at Jekyll Island, Georgia, this morning just as the rain stopped and the fog finally lifted. Gray is still the color du jour though. During our first beach walk, the sand, sea and sky all melted together, making it hard to see where each ended and the next began. Is this Zen, when all things are one?
Driftwood Beach is a bit of a misnomer, in my opinion. I would call it Beach Invasion, as the sand encroaches on the trees, killing them and making homes for all manner of tiny shelled animals. Now the beach is gray and black! I don't really need any colors in my camera sensors today. Shooting in grayscale would have worked just fine.
Wind and water combined to push over the trees, exposing root structures in fascinating patterns silhouetted against the gray clouds.
Then we noticed lines of black on the water. Floating debris? No, it looks like huge groups of ducks!
Scaup! Scaup! Scaup! Greater and Lesser, I think. Anything else??? When I looked closely and magnified the photos I saw one Redhead and one Wigeon (I think), and one Cormorant flew over. We were able to confirm all these scaup for several people walking the beach, also wondering what in the world was floating on the water. My camera isn't really broken. See, it can take pictures of red berries, if we find any.
And we found a Bluebird at the beach, although why he wanted to come to such a barren spot is beyond me. The constantly blowing wind has shaped these trees and bushes outside our hotel. I don't think the hotel staff had a hand in it, at least. Do they make hedge trimmers this big?
Large Grackles greeted us as we checked in and walked the beach by our hotel. I'm not sure what this female was so upset about, but she does not appear to be a happy camper, does she? We are spending a few days on our own playing tourist, then will attend the National Association of Interpreters Region 3 conference later in the week. When I tell people I am a Certified Interpretive Guide, they often ask how many languages I speak. Well, it's not that sort of interpretation. More to come....

1 comment:

Mary Howell Cromer said...

Hope you have a wonderful time. That Bluebird is just gorgeous and the mean face on the Grackle is quite amusing.

I have meant to ask you...what ever happened with the eggs/nest of the Bald Eagle and the noise of the Thunder Over Louisville last year? Did you ever learn any after the facts, facts? Just thinking about it since we just got back from looking for them at Land Between the Lakes as well as thinking about Derby time getting closer~