Beach stones, asphalt chunk with reflective highway paint stripe, fir cones, lobster-claw bands, aluminum soda can, Common Slipper Shells (Crepidula fornicata), Jonah Crab (Cancer borealis), Rough Periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis), birch bark (Betula papyrifera), Coralline (Corallina officinalis), Black-backed Gull feather (Larus marinus), sea glass, spruce cone, acorn (Quercus sp.), charcoal (burnt wood), Green Sea Urchins (Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis), lichen, Toad Crab (Hyas sp.), feathers, peach pit (Persica sp.), plastic liner from a soda bottle top, Rock Crab (Cancer irroratus), Horse Mussel (Modiolus modiolus)
According to my tide chart low tide was due at 8:15, so around 7:45am I drove over to Seal Harbor Beach. It was about 53ºF, overcast and foggy, with a light but cold wind from the east. A large flock of gulls was milling around at the water’s edge – there must have been 40 or more, a mix of Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) and a species I hadn’t seen before – Great Black-Backed Gulls (Larus marinus).
Note: this may be the photo that finally drives me back to using my DSLR on the beach – the day was so dark and overcast my iPhone shots of the birds were all crunchy and grainy. Yuck.
I read up on them when I got back, and apparently they are very common, so it was another humbling moment on the beach. All these ‘common’ things I’ve never seen… . They are also the largest gulls in the world, which is no surprise. Those babies were huge, almost twice the size of the Herring Gulls I’m used to! According to Wikipedia, “The great black-backed gull was one of the many species originally described by Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae, and it still bears its original name of Larus marinus.” I love that! Species names seem to change so frequently, it’s kind of adorable that these guys have kept theirs for 300 years. (Species names are a bit of sore spot for me right now, as I had learned the Dog Whelk as Thais lapillus, but stumbled across the info last week that the name has been Nucella lapillus for some time, so I had to go change it on all my photo sites. Such tedious, so boring!)
Seal Harbor has beautiful pink granite outcrops:
I found a live sea urchin stranded in the seaweed on the high tide line. I thought it was a dead sea urchin, but while I was taking this picture it started wiggling its spines, so I put it in a tide pool when I finished.
Close-up of sea urchin teeth (apparently these are tough enough for an urchin to burrow into stone):
And at the far end of the beach I found myself following in the footsteps of an earlier visitor:
One cool thing I learned while working on this photo – I can finally tell the difference between Rock Crabs and Jonah Crabs. The Jonah Crabs (bottom left) have denticulate edges to the carapace (they’re kind of zigzag) while the Rock Crab (top right) edges are smooth. And of course now that I know, it’s really obvious, doh.
This is my favorite of your beach series. I’m like you, I have to know what everything is that I see in the natural world and all about it, and learning something new is fascinating to me. And like you, I have found the species name changes over the years frustrating…but I only have to try to change it in my mind or field notes, not on my websites like you do. It’s amazing that those seemingly soft-looking urchin teeth can bore into rock. Happy Thanksgiving Jennifer. We have a few inches of pretty snow here, and we’re loving it.
Thank you! I really struggled over this one – the rhythms I wanted to set up took forever to come together. We keep getting snowstorms followed by rain, so there hasn’t been much accumulation yet. And today it was 59 degrees out! Snow forecast for tomorrow though.
I love that shot of the pink granite and barnacles. It would be an interesting reference for an abstract painting. I have never used other peoples photos for reference but the color and composition of this one is striking. I’m starting a series of oil and cold wax abstracts and would like your permission to use it as a reference and ,if I ever get around to painting it, I’ll send you a print. I’ll have the progress of the series on my paint blog.
Sure thing! Send me a link when you start painting, I’d love to watch the progress.