Finally getting back to the beach pics – would have been nice to have them up within the last month to drive the numbers up a little, but I was lazy. And really, you’re going to see a little too much of the same thing here, because it wasn’t the most productive of days photographically and the conditions were fairly narrow, but still better than the featureless sunrises and sets that I’ve encountered in more central NC.
I made it a point to be up to capture sunrise, and since we were staying just off the beach, it wasn’t like I had far to go. Still, the overcast conditions from the previous day had only cleared a bit by sunrise, and there was no hope of even seeing the sun when it broke the horizon, much less capturing a green flash. Maybe next trip – and I’ll endeavor not to make it so long between this time.
The wind was still pretty stiff and the temperature chilly, the last vestiges of the Nor’easter that assaulted the east coast, though it had struck the Outer Banks much weaker than more northern states. This was still enough to not only deposit a lot of trash along the beaches, mostly building timbers, some of it could still be seen riding the waves, making swimming too treacherous – not that it was warm enough to go swimming, but there’s always a few die-hards. I was wading in the edge of the surf (of course,) and the water temperature was quite pleasant – it’s just that getting out to dry off would have been uncomfortable. Not to mention the possibility of getting clocked by the remnants of someone’s dock. Seriously, there was an entire flight of beach stairs washed up on the sand.
One of the things I wanted to catch was the way the wind would lift a wall of spray from the tops of the breakers just as they started to curl. This one seemed to work through, to me, two subtle elements: the ‘pouncing’ nature of the waves, and that one darker cloud appearing to leap over them like a fish. This was while the sun was still largely hidden, though it did peek out very slightly at times.
The crepuscular rays back there were subtle, but distinct enough, and I wanted to use them rather than treat them as a subject. The pelicans were being distinctly uncooperative (in fact, almost invisible,) so I went with gulls, even though I’d rather have something a little less common and trite. But we have two different versions, showing how the mood seems to change with the inclusion or exclusion of the waves.
The waves were always there, but easy to leave out of the frame, and doing so made the image much more peaceful. But you can also see that their darkness changed the overall exposure a little, pushing the sunlit clouds brighter. Easy enough to tweak in post if desired, but it shows how subtle changes can occur without our even realizing it, and is another good reason to bracket sunrise/sunset images rather broadly. It’s funny, too, because usually clouds like this on the horizon cause much better colors at sunrise, but no reds, oranges, pinks, or purples were to be had that morning.
The sanderlings (Calidris alba) are ubiquitous too, and done to death, but at least they’re cute.
It’s always amusing to watch them flee the advancing foam lines as a group, legs blurring as they eschew flight, and then immediately advancing back down as the foam halts and soaks into the sand, almost seeming to make a game of it.
The foam brings in countless small crustaceans and deposits them, whereupon they burrow madly into the sand to escape exactly this kind of attention because they’re the sanderlings’ primary source of food. Watching closely, one can see the sand stirring and bubbling just as the foam fades or drifts off, often leaving ‘pinholes’ only a couple of millimeters across. Since it appears that the sanderlings gulp them down while their bills are still buried in the sand, it’s impossible to tell how many they capture in this hyperactive manner, but it seems to be enough.
Another large, unidentified gull:
Later on when the sun was fully out and it began to be quite a nice day, we were all digging in the sand after trace hits on The Girlfriend’s Sprog’s metal detector (never found anything,) when this guy sidled up rather closely while trying to appear disinterested. I’m not bothering to look up what species, so I’ll just say it was a larger one, many times the size of the sanderlings, and wasn’t fooling anybody; it was hoping for a handout or, failing that, an opportunity to steal something. The ‘expression’ of gulls is distinct, too, as if they had just discovered that the only things this party had to offer were budget wines…
This was kind of a family trip, so I didn’t have much opportunity to chase wildlife or even some night exposures under truly dark skies, though that was more due to the cloud conditions (but the moon was just past full, too, so a rotten weekend to try.) It also didn’t help that the storm had deposited much sand onto Route 12, the only road down the Outer Banks, as it frequently does, so the road was closed at Oregon Inlet and the furthest south we got was Bodie Island lighthouse. No nutrias this time, though somehow, we weren’t disappointed by this. Still, it was a getaway weekend, and since we’re a lot closer to the area now, we should be able to do this more often. Certainly, I want to do a spring trip during fledgling season to see how many different species of young I can catalog, something I haven’t done yet. But we’ll have some other posts in the meantime.
