Testing out the creation capabilities.

Conditions

4.3 mi · low tide · grey. Arrived at 8:00a, low tide at 9:20a. Overcast all morning. Temperature around 6°C, damp wind off the water. Trail flooded in two sections near the estuary mouth — took the high route both times.

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Notes

A great blue heron at the main channel. Unmoving for twenty minutes while I watched from the blind. Absolute stillness, the kind that makes you wonder if it’s real. Then one strike — I didn’t see what it caught. It swallowed something and didn’t move again.

The marsh at low tide is a different place. The channels narrow to threads of dark water between grey mudflats. The smell changes. Everything is visible that was hidden at high water — the root tangles, the crab holes, the marks where things drag themselves from one place to another.

I came back a different way, along the dike. The wind had picked up. Nothing dramatic — just the particular feeling of being in a flat, open place with nowhere to shelter.

Species log

• Ardea herodias — Great Blue Heron, main channel, stationary ~20 min
• Dunlin (flock, ~40 birds), probing mud at estuary mouth
• Buffleheads (pair), far channel
• Northern harrier, low pass over cordgrass, hunting