Posts Tagged "NC Outer Banks"

Seabird Far from Home

Posted by Pat Stewart on Jan 24, 2013 in My Blog, NC Outer Banks | 0 comments

Walking along the beach in Kill Devil Hills, NC, and enjoying the myriad of shells, skate egg cases, and seabirds, I came upon one that had met its demise so I got closer to see what I might learn.  The bird, lying on it’s side in the sand obviously died with its eyes wide open…and, though, dead, it was beautiful.  I noticed quickly the point of a fish hook coming out the top of its head so somehow a fisherman’s hook had traveled through its mouth and pierced his skull and brain along with it.  This took me back to the days of “pithing a frog’s brain” in biology class. In studying the bird, I was somewhat perplexed in identifying it.  I realized I had not seen this bird before.  It was large, white with black edged wings,  short black legs with a thin green line down the front of the legs and black webbed feet.   The unusual thing was the pretty blue ring around its eye and the colorful light blue bill.  The bird is a Northern Gannet which breed up along the New England and Canadian coasts and migrate along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts for winter.  The pretty blue bill is a sturdy one for they feed by diving straight into the ocean achieving speeds of 60 miles per hour.  The bill can grab a fish under water and swallow it before the gannet resurfaces. I do hope my next sighting of a Northern Gannet ( a cousin to the Blue-footed  Booby) is one I can view in flight and very much alive, but for this sighting, I at least added another bird to my life...

Like A Vertebral Column

Posted by Pat Stewart on Jan 23, 2013 in My Blog, NC Outer Banks | 2 comments

After the New Year, I spent a week along the NC Outer Banks with college friends, enjoying God’s great gifts of nature.  The shore…any shore, for that matter, is a favorite place for me to commune with our Creator.  The southern end of the Outer Banks had been ravaged from Superstorm Sandy so we spent most of our time north of Mirlo Beach.  We stayed in Kill Devil Hills and took day-trips to other areas like Pea Island, Manteo, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, etc. The beaches on the Outer Banks are different from the ones in SC with much higher dunes and a coarser sand composition.  We enjoyed walking along the beach with the shore birds, looking at shells and debris.  I saw my first whelk egg case.  It looked a lot like a vertebral column of some sort and seemed appropriate as the beginning of life by the sea.  Interesting to study.  My friend who grew up along the beach showed me what was inside by breaking the casing open which revealed teeny, tiny little “baby” whelks.  Each of the cases has a little hole up on the top edge which is where the “babies” hatch out to begin their long journey of life in the sea.  She dumped the little whelks out in the palm of her hand to my amazement having never seen them before. I quickly recalled these words from William Blake…  To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. Ah…the lessons of our...

Brown Pelican

Posted by Pat Stewart on Jan 13, 2013 in Portfolio, Slider | 0 comments