Every now and then I hear that someone is surprised that it can snow at the beach….it may not snow on southern beaches but it definitely snows here on our Cape Cod beaches….and it is quite beautiful!
There is something sublimely beautiful about the beach in the winter, especially with a bit of snow and ice….so bundle up and enjoy the view!
Several people have asked me to recommend some good nature related winter reading and today, being a bit cold and blustery outside seemed a good day to look over my bookshelves to find some of my favorite books…some days I just pick up one of them to reread a chapter or two…
These are newish books focuses on the nature and beaches of Cape Cod and they are all wonderful. Although “The Fo’c’sle” is a “children’s” book it so lovely and so beautifully illustrated that adults who love Cape Cod should add it to their collection… And Bob Finch’s little book is just like book candy. Throw it in your bag or glove compartment for those little pockets of time when you need something quick to read but don’t feel like reading a magazine that is about 3 years old….
I got my first nature books as a very young child and I still have many of them. I also collect ones I see at yard or estate sales. Reading books written about nature so long ago is very revealing and also nostalgic. We have changed the way we see and think about nature but even 50 or 100 years ago there were people out there trying to get people to understand why conservation was important on a personal as well as societal level. The John Hay is from my mother’s collection and has been a family favorite since my childhood, along with all the rest of his books.
I love to read essays and personal accounts of people;s interactions with nature and all these books fit into that description. If you don’t know all or any of these authors, I highly recommend them…”Life of the Skies” is a new one or me and I hope to settle in and read it this weekend…
Do you have any special nature related books you find yourself returning to again and again? I will add more over the next few weeks so feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments.
This is the time of year when the wind blows down the beach with howls and the surf hits the sand with a roar….it is the time of year when shells appear half buried in the sand like long lost skeletons…
driftwood and seaweeds add to the sandy compositions…
Brant geese are locally common on the Cape throughout the winter and their arrival in our coastal waters in the late fall is a sure sign that the seasons are changing. Found in areas where there is a good amount of eel grass brant can be found in many of our south facing beach areas, especially around estuaries. You may also find them in marshy areas and occasionally grazing in grassy areas. These brant were hanging out with the gulls at the Sandwich Marina on the canal on a recent blustery day.
Many people see brant and just think they are Canada geese but if you look closely you will see they have a dark front whereas the Canada goose has a light front (photo by NaturePhoto.com)
Canada geese are also quite a bit larger which is easy to see if you see the birds together. Imagine a herring gull and a Canada goose standing next to each other and what the medium size bird between them might be and you will have an idea about the size of a brant.
Here you can see them in relation to the gulls around them.
Brant don’t nest here but are arctic nesters, like many of our winter visitors. They come here because our coastal waters often stay open and their favorite foods are plentiful They will eat seaweeds, especially sea lettuce if their favored eel grass is in short supply. Back in the 1930s when eel grass crashed the brant population crashed along with it but they have steadily been increasing in numbers and are once again flourishing.
And if you are an old school birder, yes, brant used to be spelled brandt 😉
I’m all for greening up stuff. I love green plants and I love green living…
However….something about the warmth and the accompanying plant growth this January just seems wrong…
My strawberries are putting out new leaves and new runners…
Dandelions are popping up in my yard as well…
Tansy is growing…
And maple is budding…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for spring…but this just doesn’t feel right to me…
What a weird winter, huh?
We took the day to drive down Cape and see what we could see….
the sky and the light over Fort Hill and Nauset Marsh were just beautiful…
Coast Guard Beach was incredibly windy but gorgeous…
sluggish around here….
I photographed this live slug yesterday morning–on January 2! Unheard of here on Cape Cod for this time of year. There have been lots of unseasonable sightings this year due to the warm weather. What all have you been seeing?
at Sandy Neck…
Ever since I was a little girl it has been one of my favorite beaches…
Even back in the day the snow/sand fences were there to keep the parking lot separate from the beach. You can walk along the beach into Sandwich toward the canal or you can walk back toward the tip of the neck to the point that protects Barnstable Harbor. In either direction you can walk for miles. The towns of Barnstable and Sandwich co-own this beach and I remember sitting up late at night waiting for my mother to come home to see if Barnstable had bought the land that extended out into the dunes and behind the great marsh. It was a long and hard battle and an expensive purchase and no one knew for sure which way the votes at town meeting would go.They had bought it! It was the largest piece of conservation land Barnstable had bought and managed at that time and today it is a true jewel in the Barnstable conservation and recreation system.
Even in winter the mystery and romance of the dunes lures walkers, horseback riders and hikers out to explore. The area is great for birding and other sighting of wildlife. Beware of hunters at certain times, however, for the area is also open to certain kinds of hunting. It is open as well to overland vehicles and campers, an agreement that irks some but has made huge supporters of the area in the larger community.
When I was in high school and college I spent untold hours roaming in the dunes, sitting in the sun with friends sharing bad poetry and hopeful dreams. We talked, we napped, we drew pictures, we rolled down the dunes in the warm sand. In winter we hid in the dunes to stay warm on sunny but cold days, days we should have been in a math classroom or history classroom but we were out in nature’s classroom instead. At least that’s what we told ourselves and in many ways it was true. The dunes are wonderful in the summer of course but they take on a very different quality in the winter, a quality that reminds young minds of quests and queries and questions about the meaning of life, survival and death.
Every time I walk on Sandy Neck there are layers and layers of memories of previous years, months and days spent walking here. And yet, as all good beach walkers know, no walk on the beach is quite the same as the one before, the one last year or 20 years ago….Like the birds flying above and the crabs buried below the beach is a living, breathing, ever changing thing….
Every visit is special but some days, like today, the morning is just picture perfect….
Did you know you can tell the temperature by looking at the way the rhododendron leaves are curled? Rhododendrons are evergreens but that doesn’t mean they love the cold weather. They can tolerate it but have learned to adjust by curling their leaves. The tighter the curl, the colder the temperature. These leaves are telling you it is under 20 F. Brrrrrrr… You can get lots more information here.
The view from Coast Guard Beach this week….
Walking the dogs with a friend at First Encounter (and yes, we did bring our little bags and clean up what was necessary 😉
The rock walls at Fort Hill are always evocative, especially in winter…