News from the jetty

Mid-November is here. The stiff southern breeze threatens to push the Delaware Bay over its banks.

The high tide edge is littered with horseshoe crab shells and whelk egg cases. The cases look like Japanese lanterns designed by Alexander Calder, but even he could not have captured the symmetry.

Life at the edge of the sea is good.

While tossing clams at spotted hake today, a bird came to visit. Unlike the old gull who sneaks into my bait bucket, this guy had no ulterior motives. He looked like an overgrown junco with bright yellow legs and a stretched out beak. In between stabs at tiny critters on the rocks, he'd eyeball me, more curious than fearful.

I saw my first purple sandpiper.

(I have no idea why they're called "purple"--not a blotch of violet seen, nor why they are sandpipers--this one obviously preferred rocks to sand.)

Just off the end of the jetty, easily flying into a 20+ knot south wind, were large birds that looked like geese designed for supersonic flight. The jet black wing tips gave them away--northern gannets.

Two more lifers for me. Plenty of others, too, if I had a clue had to identify them.

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The spotted hake are still hanging by the jetty. I caught a couple today, both on the same cast. The striped bass fishermen use bigger fish for bait, true, but the ling are good, they're plentiful, and they fill up the belly as well as a bass steak.

The tide was ideal for clamming, the weather was not. A tornado watch kept the kayaks in the garage.

I did rake for a bit off Harpoon Henry's--we stumbled across a cherry stone quahog there last week. Perhaps another clammer tossed it there to throw me off the trail. Watching the sunset while chilling thigh deep in the bay mid-November is a Saturday well spent, even without clams.

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The sun barely rises 30 degrees above the horizon now. The few basil plants left hold few leaves, even fewer after I grazed today. I plucked a gnarly red tomato off the vine, probably the last vine ripened mater of the season. Our last decent eggplant split this week.

The kale will be the last hurrah.

Winter is coming.

The purple sandpiper taken by Andrew Easton; the sunset by Leslie.