A Great Blue Heron captures a northern pipefish.
This column appeared in the Recorder on July 22, the Gazette on July 24 and the Eagle on July 26.
My second visit to First Encounter Beach came on a Monday. The hustle and bustle of moving day was a thing of the past, but I am generally immune to routine traffic issues because of the early hours that I keep. There was no one on the road at 5:45 AM and when I arrived at the parking area I discovered that only one car had arrived before me. The sand flats were deserted.
Complications were present on this particular morning, however. The weather continued to provide extremely high humidity and a solid bank of fog had settled over the Cape. I knew that the tide was out, but there was no way to see far enough to know how distant the water actually was. I was excited to walk out onto the flats in conditions like this because it was a view of the area that I had never experienced before. I walked out about 100 yards and turned around to discover that I could no longer see the beach, or my car. This was going to be fun!
Understanding that there was no point in putting a great distance between myself and the parking are, I decided to turn my path parallel to the beach and walk in the straightest line that I could manage. This would allow me to find my way home by simply following my own footprints. The entire scene was otherworldly and nothing recognizable could be seen in any direction. The entire world seemed to be a flat sandy plane with occasional pools of clear water that were 2-3 inches deep.
There were birds out on the flats, but the only reason that I knew this was because they were talking to each other. Most of the chatter was from the Willets out on the sand and I used their calls as a decision-maker. Want to photograph birds? Then go to where the birds are! So I followed my ears and did my best to walk in a straight line. The heavy fog around me gave a slightly spooky effect, as living creatures seemed to gradually materialize in front of my eyes. I managed to find the Willets, but was even more surprised when a gigantic bird started to take shape off to my right.
This turned out to be a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) and I can honestly say that I had not expected to bump into this species at any point during my First Encounter excursions. The pools seemed too shallow and the creatures in them seemed too small to make a heron’s time worthwhile, but I was proven wrong when I discovered that this heron had found a pool that was more like a foot deep. So what I had to do was position myself near the bird and then do nothing for about a half-hour. After that a bird will generally get comfortable with your presence and allow a closer approach.
I think the heron might have been just as surprised to see me materialize out of the fog and it definitely took a while for the bird to stop worrying about me. The bird would take a few steps away and I would take a few steps in pursuit; never closing the distance in any meaningful way, but never losing sight of the bird. It was then that the Photo Gods smiled upon me, for the heron stumbled into a thick patch of fish and became too distracted to pay so much attention to me.
The heron came up with several different fish of several different species, but the one that seemed to be caught the most often was the Northern Pipefish (Syngnathus fuscus). Growing up to 12 inches in length with a body so slender that I might liken it to a pipe cleaner, the pipefish is a common species all along the Atlantic Coast of North America. Time and time again the heron would plunge its head into the water and come up with yet another pipefish.
As I was taking photos of the heron I heard an engine behind me and turned to see a pickup truck driving out into the fog. These were fishermen looking for clams and the low tide provided them with great places to dig. However, the fog was so thick that the same truck pulled a U-turn and came right back past me. No point in getting lost out there!
I was happy to discover that my footprints were more than adequate for finding my way back to my car. I walked for quite a while before land began to materialize off to my right. I turned around to look back in the direction of the heron and there was no evidence of any birds to be seen. They had all melted into the mist and the only hints to their presence were the fairly regular call notes that the Willets used to keep track of one another. And it is the Willet that I will focus on next week.