Just like the more famous salmon runs, river herring return to their birth ponds to breed. Spending most of their lives in salt water, they are drawn back up fresh water streams starting in March. At first only a few, called scouts show up. Soon they are joined by more and more, until the pools where they rest before continuing upstream are jammed, fish against fish, circling.
Nauset Beach, Orleans, on Christmas Day
Diane and I have a tradition of walking on Nauset beach every Christmas Day afternoon. Being a photographer, I always carry at least some of my gear. Christmas 2003 I created two of my best selling images, both with my new 3 megapixel point and shoot. That was a defining moment in my photography. Shortly after, I purchased a Canon Rebel digital SLR, and I haven’t used film since.
This Christmas, we again walked Nauset, heading toward the remains of a schooner that a nor’easter had washed up the previous month. I had photographed the piece a few days after the storm when it was still at the edge of the surf. A month later, it was now high on the beach and rolled over, exposing the ribs, pegs and planking.
An immature herring gull attepted to eat this whelk on teh shore of Pleasant Bay in Harwich. After being unable to get into the shell, it lost interest and moved on to a dead crab. I took the opportunity to create a few images of the whelk before returning it to the relative safety of the water.
The apparent atttitude of this immature common tern was reminiscent of the famous “Mad Bluebird” photograph. It was part of a group of terns I found on the shore of Round Cove in Harwich.
It’s the end of summer, and the tropics are active. In the past week two storms passed by. Tropical storm Danielle kicked up some beautiful ocean swell while staying far at sea. Hurricane Earl had us scurrying to prepare, but ended up only giving us heavy rain. This is is a photo from Tuesday of the great surfing at Nauset.
