The Early Morning Beach

A man once wrote of the difficulties he experienced in observing animals out-of-doors, because of frequent interruptions by fellow human beings who could not imagine what he was doing. Some such feeling, although unexpressed, led us to rise at dawn and walk along the beach on the ocean side of Cape May. One of us carried a camera, tripod and accessories; the other an assortment of jars into which prized specimens could be placed as found. Together we inspected the beach drift and the band of water where the larger-than-average waves washed flotsam and jetsam back and forth. Every little while we discovered something to add to our collection.

Hunting was good at that early hour, and each new trophy elicited much comment and discussion. Soon the one of us with the camera equipment took charge also of the jars, so that the other of us could hold in one gloved-hand a large jellyfish too big for a jar, while the opposite fist clutched the long, sharp tail of a huge horseshoe crab. It is just such specimens that fill museums of natural history! For long enough we were so intent on our beachcombing that we paid no heed to the animal tracks. Perhaps it was only when our burdens became too numerous for us to make any further additions, that we shifted our attention to the damp sand at our feet. There we were surprised to see indentations of many forms, reminding us of the prints seen in fresh-fallen snow.

In winter the woodsman learns to recognize the clean-cut tracks he sees. He interprets trails in terms of vole and fox, bear and bobcat, mouse and grouse. Where they cross or run together, he watches for a rumpled patch of snow, a spot of blood, some fur or feathers for evidence of a tragedy. A stained hollow marks the spot where two hungry animals became one, and that one better fed than it was before. Neither of us had been conscious before of such marks in sand. What could we learn from the beach? Surely these tracks were sufficiently similar to the types in snow that any observant person could piece them together in terms of the wild inhabitants that shared the region.

Probably we had never before been on the beach so early in the day when the slanting sunlight cast dark shadows even in the shallows Certainly first thing in the morning is the best time to study sand spoor. The myriad tracks made during the night are freshest then. A maze of trails surrounded us. How many of them did we know? What others could we identify?

By: davidbunch

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