Warmer

The wind flipped around to the West and we had sun and clouds.  The high was in the 70s and the water was colder.  K noticed a spider thread between the camellia and the azalea but I couldn't find more web or a spider.  A monarch circled the water but paid no attention to the milkweed.  Titmice were hungry for seeds.  

 

Sunshine at last!

After four days of gloom with little rain to show for it, the sun's return was very welcome.  A chilly wind still blew and the tide still ran high.  We took down the hummer feeders.  I heard birds commenting in the trees.  Alas, I was in a meeting all afternoon and the sky clouded over by the time I got home.  

Full moon

The Northeaster continued to push water up the Lynnhaven and the full moon (not that it was visible) pulled the tide even higher.  It was gray and cold and sporadically drizzling.  A Carolina wren got hungry enough to join the cardinals, chickadees, and house finches.  Trash bobbed in the creek along with geese.  Across the creek, an egret walked along the bulkhead that had emerged as the tide dropped.  

Gull games

The wind was somewhat diminished but still pushing the tide into the grass.  Our living shoreline looked quite flattened.  I saw no birds but a few seed eaters until late when there must have been a school of fish in the creek.  Gulls skated on the air, twirled and skimmed the water.  To the Northeast, the clouds looked pleated.  Geese huddled in the lea of a dock.  A cormorant splash-landed.  A great egret landed on the dock, then shifted to a piling where it got its feathers back in order.  The light got a little better and there was even a bit of color to the clouds at sunset.  

 

Still blowing

High tide, driven by the wind and moon, was up in the grass.  The gusty wind was wet but there wasn't measurable rain.  A morning glory bloomed anyway.  Seed eaters got too hungry to wait out the storm.  A brown headed nuthatch joined the regulars.  

In the late afternoon, gulls played with the wind over the creek.  I think they were laughing gulls in winter plumage and larger ring billed gulls or maybe herring gulls.  But the light was bad and the window misted, so I couldn't be sure.  Cormorants were out fishing so I suppose that's what brought the gulls.  A great blue heron flew from the water's edge.  One of the larger saltbushes blew over.into the grass.  

Northeaster

Wind from the Northeast piled high tide over the dock and wrenched a board off.  Tree shreds littered the ground and clogged the water.  Seed eaters ventured out during lulls.  A little rain fell, enough to streak the glass.  The temperature was definitely Fall-like.  In the afternoon, I surprised a dove sitting on the railing, but it flew when I reached for the camera

Summer's lease

In Sonnet 18 Shakespeare wrote, "And summer’s lease hath all too short a date" which always comes to my mind at the autumnal equinox which occurs a little after 8pm here which is 1am Wednesday at the prime meridian.  Today was mostly cloudy, warm, and intermittently breezy.  I swam in the late morning and rescued two ground beetles and a two-lined spittlebug,  Afterward as I dripped, the sun found a rent in the cloud cover.  I saw a dark butterfly that never alighted and a Southern purple mint moth that posed.  A small skink flowed down the step.  Chickadees and house finches visited the seed feeder.  A squirrel had an itch.  In addition to the beautyberries, dogwood berries and hackberries were ripe and waiting for migrating birds.