What do I do with myself now?

Flores Silvestres

2011-08-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we took a walk with friends along a small river below Santa Rosa. Wildflowers greeted us all along our way. The rainy season has finally urged the flowers to 'show off'.

This kind of photo opportunity makes me want a better camera than my digital Brownie. But, my little no fuss camera is so easy to carry and it is waterproof.

The brief shower that caught us was no problem, and I then felt I had made the right camera choice.

Hummingbirds in the Jardin

2011-05-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

It is very dry here in Guanajuato. Birds flock to our bird bath and bees desperate for water seek out any puddle from our sloppy plant watering. All of the nearby creeks and rivers are bone dry and everything is waiting for the season to break, for the rain to begin and for the brown of the countryside to turn lush and emerald again.

The hummingbirds are particularly thick right now. I suppose they are concentrated to anything wet, and that there are some additional birds coming through on their migrations.

We have in the past had a great deal of difficulty here feeding hummingbirds this time of years as the bees swarm so thickly around the feeders that the hummingbirds can't get near the feeders. The bees even crawl inside of the feeders through the too large feeding tubes and totally clog up the feeders.

Our friends Janet and Ron brought us a wonderful gift on their last trip down from Canada. It was the hummingbird feeder shown in the video. It has a special feature, bee guards - the little yellow cages over the feeding tubes. They work beautifully as you can see in the video. Makes us want to shout with joy, but I employed Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee to do it for me! Woo Hoo!

Pirúl - a Tree Cutting

2010-09-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Today a very large pirúl tree was cut down at Hacienda Luna next to where we live. It had grown so large that it was threatening to push a massive stone wall over and endanger the adjacent house.

Notice as you view the pictures that the young man cutting this huge pepper tree is using only a machete and a small ax/hatchet. He started at the top of the tree and he cut the tree down small piece by piece. And, he does not have any kind of safety rope or belt to grab him if there is a problem - balance, wind, tree splitting, etc. I could clearly see the poor condition of the badly frayed polyethylene ropes that were being very skillfully used to swing the tree parts away from the house. Also notice how high he is above the concrete basketball court below. It must be 50-60 feet from the section he was cutting in these pictures down to the court.

Finally they brought in a chain saw to clean up and cut the very large sections in small enough pieces to carry out.

About Pirúl

Pirúl or Peruvian Pepper (Schinus molle) is an evergreen tree that grows to 50 feet (15 meters). It is native to the Peruvian Andes, but grows wild all over Mexico. The bright pink fruits or peppercorns are used in treating a variety of wounds and infections due to their antibacterial and antiseptic properties.

In Guanajuato there is a traditional drink made from the peppercorns. I have made a quite tasty aeoli by using the peppercorns crushed dry in a blender and then incorporated in my regular garlic aeoli recipe.

A Summer Swim

2010-07-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

Rudi's Neighbor, the Hawk

Thursday, July 15, 2010

I drove over to Leon today to visit my friend Rudi. When I drove up to his house I discovered that his neighbor has a beautiful hawk on his front porch. Rudi doesn't know the hawks' origin, but I suspect the bird has been "rescued". Perhaps it is the victim of a car hit. The bird was quite docile and allowed me a very close look without any signs of being nervous.

The Lake

After visiting a while, Rudi suggested we hike up a canyon between Leon and Guanajuato to a lake he has found. He assured me that the water was very clear, clean and cool. It was a hot day so we took bathing suits.

The lake was beautiful and we had a really refreshing swim.

On our way back down the mountain we walked along with some local boys - probably 12-14 years old. They had been out hunting and had killed a rather large lizard with their slingshots. They were very interested in the "extranjeros" and they had lots of questions for us.

Henequen

2010-06-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Henequen Plant

In 1984 Alice and I visited Merida for a few days while on a six week jaunt through parts of Mexico and Belize. Merida truly was the white city then. Men were wearing guayaberas and white trouser and finely woven straw hats from Becal. Women also wore white, but their dresses were heavily embroidered with brightly colored flower patterns. The city appeared to us to be clean and prosperous.

What we did not realize at that time was that we were witnessing the very end of the henequen era in the Yucatan.

In the 1950's nylon rope began to to take the place of rope made from henequen and sisal. And, by 1984, the last commercially viable crop of henequen in the Yucatan was harvested. The henequen era of enormous wealth creating plantations utilizing almost slavelike "company store" cheap labor was over. The henequen rope market collapsed, and Dupont with its new synthetic products ruled. Only narrow specialty markets survive today for these natural fibers. Those markets include paper, cloth, wall coverings, mescals for drinking and carpets,

Returning to Merida in May of 2010 we found a different city. Nikes, t-shirts (playeras) with designers names like Tommy Hilfiger and jeans are now standard dress. The traditional dress can now only be seen where it is set up for tourists.

Dress on the Plaza Grande, Merida 2010

On our trip from Merida to Belize in 1984 we took a bus and rode all day through huge henequen plantations. Today it is difficult to locate where they were as they have become overgrown - reclaimed by Mother Nature.

Henequen (Agave fourcroydes Lem.) and Sisal (Agave sisalana) are two of the many types of agave. The agave is commonly called maguey in Mexico, and there are about 208 different species. Henequen is used primarily for fiber production. Sisal is a close relative to henequen and is similarly utilized. Sisal is considered to be a "finer" fiber and is used today in some blends with cotton. I purchased a guayabera and a hamaca in Merida, and both were cotton/sisal blends.

The henequen and sisal plants appear as a rosette of sword-shaped leaves 1.2 to 1.8 meters long. They grow out of a thick stem that may reach 1.7 meters (5 ft). The leaves have regularly-spaced teeth 3-6 mm long, and a terminal spine 2-3 cm long. These sword shaped leaves are harvested in bundles and they yield the long stiff fibers that were traditionally used in making twine, rope and mattress ticking. The terms henequen (alternative spellings are henequin and heniquen) and sisal may refer either to the plant or the fiber, depending on context. Both are sometimes incorrectly referred to as sisal hemp because hemp (made from the same plant marajuana comes from) was for centuries a major source for fiber. Further confusion comes from the name of the Mexican port, Sisal, from which much of the fiber product was shipped. Henequen and sisal shipped from Sisal was labeled as from Sisal. And, often everything received from that port was commonly known as Sisal.

Although now grown in many parts of the world both henequen and sisal, are thought to be indigenous to the Yucatan.

So, while in Merida we decided to visit some of the remaining vestiges of the henequin plantations. the first was Yaxcopoil.

Fiber Processing Building Yaxcopoil

This building was a theater for plays and dances

Smokestack for processing plant

Machinery for processing

Living area, gardens and pools for owners

When we traveled to Cuzamá to visit the cenotes we were on the property of the old Hacienda Nohchakan.

Entrance to processing buildings at Hacienda Nohchakan

Processing Building

Road Marker for Hacienda Nohchakan

More Nohchakan

It is hard to grasp the great wealth that was generated from these plantations. At the height of the henequen era Merida was one of the richest cities in the world. Since the henequen collapse many of the workers from these plantations have moved into the city of Merida and since 1984 Merida has grown from around a half a million to over one million people. Merida has some industry, but is primarily dependent on tourism as its economic engine.

Cenotes

2010-06-01T22:55:00.000-07:00

Inside a cenote cavern

You can't be in the Yucatan too long before you start wondering how people could make a life here year round. You see the archeological sites with beautiful cities, temples, and agricultural areas; and except for right along the coast you don't see water. Especially in the northern Yucatan there are no obvious rivers, creeks, or lakes.

There is a lot of rain in the Yucatan at certain times of the year. The rainy season runs from June through October. It is associated with the Mexican monsoon which draws warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean landward. Yet, there are long very dry stretches. So where did the daily water come from for the people of the peninsula?

Part of the answer is that the indigenous people were acutely aware of the seasonal changes and they went to great lengths to prepare for those changes. In Uxmal, for example, there was an underground cistern (chultun) for each family unit of twenty or more people. These cisterns were carefully engineered so that the city's rainwater drainage system filled the cisterns providing water storage for the dry periods.

Another important answer to the question of water source lies in the porous limestone from which that most of the Yucatan is composed. There are systems of underground rivers and lakes throughout the Yucatan in this limestone and many are interconnected. Sometimes these rivers or lakes are exposed by a collapse of the limestone above them and deep natural sinkholes that the Mayas called cenotes (dzonot) are formed. These cenotes may appear as a lake, or sometimes there are only tiny openings into these water systems. Through these openings you may enter into a cavern often filled with beautiful stalagmites (drippers).

These caverns open onto the underground rivers and lakes. The Maya found many of these cenotes and often built large cities near them. These cenotes were their principal water source.

Looking down into a cenote from ground level entrance

Almost hidden entrance into a cenote

Steep stairway entrance into cenote

Swimmers in refreshing clear cenote pool

Alice and I went to visit a system of cenotes near the town of Cuzamá. Cuzamá is famous in the region for its cenotes and the peculiar way of visiting them. The main cenotes in this zone are Chelentún, Chacsinic-Che and Bolonchojol. The route to these different cenotes is traveled by way of trams that are small rail cars hauled by ponies. The trams run over rails that are an ingenious adaptive reuse of technology from the henequen plantation era. The track and tram system was originally used for bringing the henequen out of the fields to process for its fiber - primarily to be made into rope. Now local entrepreneurs will take you on a 7 km gallop along these rails to visit the cenotes. This gives you an opportunity to see the overgrown henequen fields and dense growth along the route. At one point along the way I smelled a very sweet familiar scent, looked in that direction and spotted a rather large honey bee operation.

Track through old henequen plantation

When we arrived at the second cenote we went swimming. The water that gathers in these subterranean cenotes is a crystal clear turquoise color with a very pleasant temperature of 78° F (25.5º C). There were fish easily visible swimming about, and it felt great to jump in as the temperature above ground was around 100° F (37.8º C).

Below is a short clip I took of a pony pulling a tram through the heavily overgrown henequen plantation. Give it a minute to load.

Fly Fishing Rio Lagartos

2010-05-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

Jumping a little tarpon along the mangrove edge
give the video a minute to load

It has been almost two years since I picked up a fly rod - or any kind of fishing gear.

I have missed fishing and today, Tuesday May 25th, I'm still sore from this past Sunday's experience. I'll remember fishing in Rio Largatos for a good while. It turned out to be sort of like fishing for largemouth bass on steroids.

Diego Nunez, my guide, offered a choice of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico proper for big, 100-200lb, tarpon (sabalo) or fishing inside of the barrier island chain for "baby" tarpon and snook (robalo). There was a pretty stiff wind coming in from the Gulf and the open water was going to be pretty choppy so I picked the inside fishing. It was a good choice.

A long shallow bay runs east/west in front of the village of Rio Lagartos. It is called Estero Rio Lagartos. Most of the estero to the east is in the Reserva de la Biospera Ria Lagartos where Alice and I had gone the previous day to see the huge flocks of flamingos and other birds. Diego took me in his panga to the west end of the estero. We started fishing right out in the middle of this bay. It did not look like a good spot to me. The water there was only about a foot and a half deep. The bottom was covered with grass with occasional sand spots slightly deeper. I couldn't see anything that looked particularly fishy. There appeared to be no real structure. Diego told me that the tidal variation there was about one meter - not accounting for wind. And, when we started fishing the tide was about half and going down.

Diego stopped the panga and we began to drift with the wind and everything quieted down. I started to see baitfish everywhere, and then tarpon everywhere. Line management was a bear as the flyline did not want to stay on the deck due to the wind . Almost immediately I hooked up a nice fish for a couple of jumps and then off. Same thing again. When I slowed down the streamer I snagged the grass on the bottom. After four or five false starts I landed a nice 10 pounder. It was a beautiful fish that jumped a dozen times and ran the 9 weight deep into the backing several times.

Diego then suggested that I switch to a popper and then it really began to feel like bass fishing. The fish were very aggressive with the popper. And surprisingly, my solid hookup ratio improved.

There were so many fish to cast to that it was like dove hunting when a lot of birds are flying. I really had to concentrate on individual fish. - Lots of hookups, lots of jumps and I brought a half a dozen to the boat in the first hour.

Then we moved. It is always hard for me to leave fish when they are really being cooperative. But, Diego told me that we might find snook in another area to our south. There were numerous creeks and open spots emptying from a dense mangrove complex. We staked out near the mouth of a creek where a pretty deep hole was in shaded by large red mangroves mixed with the taller black mangroves.

First cast - bam a really big snook. He showed his wide back on the strike and gave me one jump, a nice look and sent my popper flying back at me.

We poled back into a couple of small openings in the mangrove where I caught a couple of smaller tarpon in very close quarters. Tough casting! And, I caught a lot of mangrove leaves.

We saw lots of smaller snook but they just weren't interested.

At around ten o'clock the heat began to set in and I was worn out. Solid casting, hook-ups and hook-offs, and releases since daybreak and it was time for me to quit.

My wrist is sore, my right arm is sore, my right side is sore. I've had a load of ibuprophen and I'm happy.

An interesting note:

The village is called Rio Lagartos
The reserve is called Ria Lagartos

It was explained to me by our birding guide, Roman Fernandez, that Ria is used to describe places where salt and fresh water meet.

Flamingos, Flamingos

2010-05-24T11:48:00.001-07:00

Pink Water

May 22nd, 2010

Alice and I are standing on the dikes of a huge salt works bordering Mexico's Reserva de la Biospera Ria Lagartos. We are looking at water that is incredibly salty and absolutely pink colored from small brine shrimp and other tiny carotene loaded organisms. Our guide, Roman Fernandez, scoops a handful to show us the pink orange squiggles thrashing about in the water. This is the food that makes the flamingos pink!

Fossil evidence shows us that 56 to 34 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch, the dawn of mammals, flamingos were wading about. Flamingos are gregarious birds in the genus Phoenicopterus and family Phoenicopteridae. Worldwide there are six different species. One of these, the American Flamingo, lives in the Caribbean with the greatest numbers in the Ria Lagartos Reserve area. And, when you see the huge population of wild flamingos there - sometimes there are as many as 40,000 in the reserve - they appear little changed from their early appearance on this earth. Gawky with their upside down looking bill yet incredibly graceful they glide across the vast flats of the reserve.

We had driven from Merida to Rio Lagartos on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the northern part of the the Yucatan. Once there we hired a guide to take us on on a birding adventure to view some of the hundreds of different species of birds that live or migrate through this reserve. We were not disappointed. Our guide, Roman, was a gifted naturalist well versed in the life histories and habits of the creatures we saw -birds and others. He filled us with such information as the size of the flamingos - 2.5 kilos for females, 5.5 kilos for males, that they may naturally live for 20 years, that they have few if any predators, that they lay and incaubate one egg per year, that they are white or green when young, and that they mate for life.

We had gone to Rio Lagartos , a fishing village of 3,000 inhabitants, to see the flamingos, but they were only part of the great show we experienced. Among the birds we saw in that afternoon were:

Thousands of Flamingos / Flamenco Comun
Great Blue Heron / La Gran Garza de Azule o Garzon Cenizo
Great Egret / Garzon Blanco

Boat-billed Heron

Boat-billed Heron / Garza Cucharon
Snowy Egret / Garzita Nivea

Great Black-hawk

Great Black-hawk / Aguililla Negra
Osprey / Gavilan Pescador

Feeding Wood Stork

Wood Stork / Ciguena
Roseate Spoonbill /Espatula
White Ibis / Ibis Blanco
Magnificent Frigate Bird / Fragata

Brown and White Pelicans

Brown Pelican / Alcatraz Pardo
White Pelican / Alcatraz Blanco
Neotropic Cormorant / Corvejon
Anhinga / Huizote
Ruddy Ground Dove / Tortilita Rojiza
Scaled Pigeon / Paloma Escamosa
Yucatan Parrot / Loro Yucateco

And many other birds.

Additionally we saw:

BIG Croc

Crocodiles / Cocodrilos We saw several. One was huge and we saw it "up close"!! Roman said it was nesting. I later read that nesting crocodiles are most dangerous!

Purple Rain

2010-04-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

This time of year in Guanajuato the jacaranda trees are blooming and their purple/blue blossoms are raining on the city.

Maybe Prince has been to Guanajuato.

Kiddie Banda de Rock

2010-03-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

I was walking along Alonso near Jardin Union on a beautiful spring morning at the end of March, 2010 when I heard a Keith Richard's electric guitar blues riff tumble out the door of an old monastary now owned by the city of Guanajuato. Naturally, I couldn't resist stopping to find out just who, what and why. It turned out that a four man rock band was tuning up there for a free rock concert to be played that afternoon in the plazuela in front of the old church, San Roque.

I liked the bluesy sound which I don't hear much of here in Mexico - so, that afternoon I showed up at the improbable start time of 4:00PM at San Roque for the concert. Boy, was I surprised!

This was a kiddie rock concert! Featured songs were about how much fun it is to jump and how we should mind our parents. But that was just for starters. I found myself sitting among lots of small kids with their parents enjoying songs delivered at a level of Spanish aimed straight for the kids - and me.

The music was really well done and fun. And there was a cast of characters which included clowns, ten-foot stilt dancers, puppets, ponies and skeletons - death having its own special "continuing" twist here in Mexico, i.e. suitable for children.

2009-04-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

There have been two full moons since we arrived in Guanajuato, Mexico. We’ve been here now for just over seven weeks.
The most notable physical things about this beautiful place are the altitude, around seven thousand feet at the casita where we are living, and the incredible dryness of the air, - el tiempo está muy seco. Neither Alice nor I have been able to get used to either of these conditions. We “run out of breath” –oxygen- frequently and we go to sleep early. At night I am having vivid fantastical Mexican dreams. The dryness is very tough on our skin and noses. We are both having lots of nose bleeding.
So there, the bad stuff is out of the way.
This city, Guanajuato, is in many ways similar to Raleigh, North Carolina, our home for many years. The population is largely well educated and by Mexican standards middle class. The local economy is well spread out. The city of Guanajuato is the capital of the State of Guanajuato and it is the center of state government. The prestigious University of Guanajuato is smack in the middle of the city with a law school, architecture school, mining school, language schools, symphony orchestra, etc. etc. There are many other schools here. There are private schools for all levels of education, language schools and trade schools with very specific missions, for example, metal work.
Because of its beauty, its monuments, and it importance in Mexican history; Guanajuato was declared a "World Heritage Site" by UNESCO (Patrimonia de la Humanidad) in 1988. There are some structures and buildings in this city that were built in the 1500’s and 1600’s. And, it is fairly common to see buildings constructed in the 1700’s.
There are a number of large still productive gold and silver mines here. Some of these have been producing at high levels since the 1500’s. In fact, mines in this city, beginning with the Rayas and the Mellado mines which opened in 1558, literally carried the largest share of Spain’s enormous financial burden during its period of greatest power and influence.

An important point of Mexican history is that this city is considered to be “the cradle” of the First Mexican Revolution, the break away from Spain. Large numbers of Mexican tourists come here for that reason. A large statue of El Pípila, the Indian miner who was among those who first openly challenged Spain’s authority, stands overlooking the city. Juan José de los Reyes Martínez was Pípila’s real name. Pípila, as the story goes, was a young man born with defects both mental and physical. His physical deformities caused him to walk in a fashion not unlike the hen turkey and he was an object of ridicule. The nickname given to him, Pípila, is the Spanish/Mexican word for a hen turkey. Pípila was immortalized by his act of bravery when he crawled up to the wooden the doors of the Alhondiga, a fortress like granary. The Spanish were “holed up” there. Pípila braved the Spanish musket fire repelling it using a large flat stone strapped on his back. Then, he smeared tar on the wooden door and set the door afire. The door burned allowing the rebellious Mexicans to enter the building and kill the Spanish. Horrible acts of retribution by the Spanish followed, but the revolution was “on”.
The city is and has been an important art center. Great artists were born here and worked here including Diego Rivera and Chavez Morado. Among the many museums here are museums celebrating the works of both of these twentieth century artists who interpreted much of Mexico’s history in their art.
The city is FULL of beautiful public parks and they are loved and used. You would hardly know that television set exists here. Every night in the parks individual guitar player/singers, mariachi groups, renaissance lute groups, all kinds of bands and more are filling the nights with music. People are strolling around the Jardin Union listening to competing music, eating great food and kissing. Yes, kissing. Guanajuato is the city of the kiss, el beso. Aside from being a frequent pastime for people, there is a street named for kissing, Callejon del Beso (the little street or alley of the kiss). This little callejon is so narrow that you are kissing if you pass someone there. And, Besame Mucho is popular with lots of singers.
Guanajuato has a wonderful Symphony Orchestra. We were surprised when we went to hear their first concert of the season which included Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture, a Mendelssohn violin set with virtuoso violinist, Suliman Takalli, and a portion of Mendelssohn’s 5th Symphony, the Reform, which was written to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Lutheran church and reflects sounds of Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress. The guest conductor, Albert Moehring, was from the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina.

Drinking is also popular. There are all kinds of great tequilas available, good wine, beer, and local mescals of exotic “curados”.
There are most unusual and delicious fruit drinks, waters (aguas) and juices (jugos) sold on the streets and in restaurants. We have tried and have delighted in such unusual and, to me, unlikely choices as cumber (pepino) juice or mango/strawberry.

Introduction to the Casa Museo Gene Byron

2009-04-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

Gathering in the Jardin after the Concert

Today Alice and I went to a concert in Marfil, a suburb of Guanajuanto. We met a couple, John and Sue Cocoran, at Escuela Mexicana, and they told us about this concert to be held at Casa Museo Gene Byron.
The Concert Program read as follows: Concierto de violin, piano y contrabajo

Three young men performed. The piano player was very young – we heard only fifteen years old. He carried the concert playing in most of the segments sometimes by himself, a couple of times with the violinist and also with the contrabajo player. I thought that the segments with the contrabajo player were the most interesting. It turned out that the contrabajo player performs with the University of Guanajuato Orchestra. The music was wonderful.

The setting was more than wonderful. The concert was held in an old hacienda that had been converted into a museum/performance center. The grounds were lavishly planted. Flowers were blooming everywhere and were complimented by lush greenery clinging to the walled gardens.

An old man named Virgilio and his wife met us at the entrance and introduced themselves and welcomed us. It turns out that Virgilio was once married to Gene Byron

A Mexican Adventure

2009-02-05T06:29:00.000-08:00

On January 28th, 2009 Alice and I left Morehead City, North Carolina and began a new adventure. We headed to Mexico. We finally took a long hoped for leap into the world of the Spanish language. We enrolled in a language school in the old colonial silver city and provincial capital of Guanajuato. Our faithful dog, Baby, accompanied us, and he will become a perro.

We left the USA on Saturday, January 31, 2009. We missed our flight from Raleigh because the plane we were scheduled to take to Atlanta wasn't big enough to carry Baby's kennel. We thought we had thoroughly covered that with Delta long before we left Morehead City, but they got us anyhow. Delta was very nice about it and delaying our flight was certainly best for the Babe as they would have loaded the kennel sideways to get it in the plane. And, Baby would have been traumatized. Delta put us in a nearby hotel until the next flight with a large enough cargo hold. They also gave us food vouchers, and $200 in travel vouchers for a future travel date. We were able to contact Victor Vásquez, the man whose business was to drive us from Mexico City to Guanajuato, via email on our new laptop.

The next flight went smoothly except that we arrived in Mexico City at 10:00PM Mexico City time.
We cleared customs with the kind help of a man named Israel Cundin who we met on the plane. Israel has a couple of Mexican restaurants in the Louisville KY area. He was to be visiting family in Mexico and attending a five month cooking school.

A man named Tomás Morín was at the customs entrance with a sign with our names on it when we finally cleared around 10:30 CST. Tomás drove us to Guanajuato and we arrived around 4:30AM. By 5:30 we had found our place to stay in GTO. Baby, Alice and I were all exhausted and we slept until afternoon.

The woman in whose home we are staying is named Martha Abascal. She is very nice and doesn't pronounce the H in her name. Our place is a studio apartment consisting of one big room, a kitchenette, a bathroom and a balcony. It sits literally on top of Martha's house and from the balcony there is a great view of the city. The mountain we live on is very steep. The walk down to school is fairly easy and it takes about fifteen minutes. It is damn near impossible to walk back up although we have a couple of times. We can get a cab up for 25-30 pesos, about $2US.

The school is very lively and we are both overwhelmed (abrumador). We are each taking three, one hour classes per day. So far, we love it!

A Close Encounter with Ospreys

2009-01-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

A group of ten or so "bird banders" had been banding terns on Wainwright Island in late summer of 2008. This particular trip was a “clean up" with the goal of banding stragglers and birds missed on two excursions to Wainwright earlier in the summer. This trip also featured something a little unusual. A Brandt was mixed in with the terns.

Brandt with Terns

The Brandt was a delight to encounter. He/she was a goofy bird that couldn't fly and was taking refuge with the terns. This might have been the highlights of the day, but after we arrived back at the landing on Cedar Island and stowed all of banding gear away most of our crowd quickly dispersed. It was then that John Weske asked to the two of us who remained if we were up for a little different adventure. He suggested that we go back out into the sound to a channel marker where we had observed an Osprey nest with babies and try to band them. John, Rachel Salmon, and I jumped back on the boat and headed out to the nest.

I have always admired ospreys but I had never really looked at one close up. I was a little apprehensive as I maneuvered the boat into the tide flow and John swung onto the marker ladder with a nimble jump from the bow. He was quickly onto the nesting platform. Mom and Dad Osprey were suddenly on the scene screaming and darting through the air toward John.

Ospreys present a banding problem that is different from the problems of banding pelicans and terns as the Osprey babies are asynchronously born. Of a typical clutch of three eggs, they may have been laid -first egg till the last – several days to perhaps even a week or more apart. And, the hatching is spaced out roughly the same, rather than a clutch hatching at (more or less) the same time - as is more usual among birds. So, when we looked into this particular Osprey nest there were three babies. One - the one in the picture below - was closing in on time to fledge. The other two were much smaller, the smallest just a puffball.

Osprey Baby

John grabbed the big chick first and banded it. He wanted to get that bird out of the nest so he could gently handle the little birds as he banded them. I asked John as he handed the big bird down to me after banding it if it would bite. He, of course, told me no. - Note my right index finger where the bird immediately bit me, and notice the size of this beautiful creature's feet with new band.

Rachel Salmon with the biggest Osprey baby

I first become aware of this concept of asynchronous hatching when I read Marie Winn's book Red-Tails in Love? But having this eye to eye encounter made me think about this concept even more. What was the reason for it? What was Mother Nature up to?

A little research led me to find that this asynchronous hatching is seen in various types of raptors, and it is an adaptation to the kind of often wildly fluctuating food supply found in coastal Carolina's rivers, sounds and oceans. During seasons or times of seasons when food is in short supply, the later hatched young will probably starve as the earlier hatched young, being larger and stronger, deprive them of food (siblicide - they push their weaker brothers or sisters out of the nest) And, the size of the brood is reduced to a level in balance with the available food supply. In years of plenty all the young may be able to survive.

Shrimp

2008-09-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

We saw this painting in Mazatlan on a trip to Mexico a few years ago and I loved it and took a picture. I am sorry, but I didn’t get the artists name. Please tell me if you know. I would be pleased to amend this caption.

Alice and I love shrimp. They are exotic beautiful creatures with pointy heads, lots of legs and graceful antennae flowing about. They fall into the category of crustaceans, salt water creatures with their skeleton on the outside. Despite this unusual placement it is a convenience for peeling them prior to eating. And, we think they are so good to eat!

What kinds of shrimp are found in our part of the world? Morehead City, NC?

What is their life cycle?

Since what we love to eat them, how can we learn to capture them for food?

We have been prospecting about our new home area with a four foot radius 3/8” mesh cast net casting all over the place while wading. Also we have been pushing around thin water in our little jon boat or one of our kayaks. We have cast our nets around the edges of the marsh. We have cast my net into creeks, channels and waterways onto hard bottom and heavy black mud. We have found ourselves tangled with oyster rocks and pilings and have caught many species of fish while trying to figure out where the shrimp are and when. So far, here is what I’ve learned.

There seem to be several kinds of shrimp native to our North Carolina coastal area. They are commonly referred to as brown shrimp, white shrimp, green tails, pink shrimp, spotted shrimp, bay shrimp, sand shrimp, grass shrimp, rock shrimp, ocean shrimp and so on – many names and confusing to the casual shrimp appreciator.

To get to the bottom of the question of just who our local shrimp are, I checked with the NC Division of Marine Fisheries and got the following info:

‘North Carolina has three main types of shrimp: brown, pink and white. Shrimp are estuarine dependent - that means they live in marshes and estuaries when they are very young because it’s safe and there is plenty of food. They grow very quickly, doubling in size every few weeks. When shrimp are almost full grown, they swim out of the estuaries into the ocean.
Shrimp are considered an annual crop because they do not live very long, only about two years. The amount of shrimp we have from year to year varies, depending on the weather. If we have a very cold winter, then we will have a small shrimp population the following spring. If we have lots of rain, then the shrimp will move out into the ocean before they are fully grown.
Shrimp are one of the most economically important fisheries in North Carolina. Most of these shrimp are caught with trawl nets in our sounds and rivers.’

Brown Shrimp (Penaeus aztecus) are North Carolina’s most abundant shrimp species and support a major commercial fishery along our central and southern coastline. Brown shrimp are spawned in the ocean and carried by tides and wind driven currents into our estuaries in late winter and early spring.
Most brown shrimp are caught in the summer and have a maximum life span of 18 months. They can grow as large as nine inches. Brown shrimp account for 68% of North Carolina’s shrimp landings.*

Pink Shrimp (Penaeus duorarum),or spotted shrimp, rank as North Carolina’s second most abundant shrimp species. Pink shrimp are spawned in the ocean April through July and carried by tides and wind driven currents into our estuaries where they overwinter.
Pink shrimp are harvested in the spring and the fall, and have a maximum life span of 24 months. They can grow as large as 11 inches. Pink shrimp account for 28% of North Carolina’s shrimp landings.*

White Shrimp (Penaeus setiferus), or green tails, are a minor species in North Carolina. White shrimp are spawned in the ocean from March to November and are carried by tides and wind driven currents into our estuaries. White shrimp are harvested primarily in the fall. These shrimp have a maximum life span of 24 months and they can grow as large as eight inches. White shrimp account for 4% of North Carolina’s shrimp landings.*

*These percentages will vary slightly from year to year.’

We have also come to believe that Grass Shrimp may make up a significant portion of the small shrimp we have taken. We identify Grass Shrimp by their more prominent little claws. Grass shrimp are locally called jumpers or popcorn shrimp.

Brown Shrimp on left, White Shrimp on right

Following is a chart describing the annual economic value of Shrimp to the state of North Carolina.

Shrimp (Heads On)
Includes brown, pink, white, and rock
YEAR POUNDS
(WHOLE WEIGHT) VALUE ($)
1972 5,563,261 $3,549,492
1973 5,003,417 $4,738,223
1974 8,440,203 $4,606,363
1975 5,163,610 $5,053,944
1976 6,642,713 $8,171,394
1977 5,600,329 $7,239,080
1978 2,960,762 $3,883,836
1979 4,941,240 $9,728,917
1980 9,823,490 $17,184,994
1981 2,557,426 $5,295,209
1982 7,027,164 $16,411,472
1983 6,115,278 $13,564,846
1984 5,046,163 $10,482,761
1985 11,683,427 $21,130,303
1986 6,162,438 $13,934,191
1987 4,416,636 $8,178,180
1988 8,139,190 $16,509,108
1989 8,922,932 $15,620,436
1990 7,839,457 $15,885,027
1991 10,740,936 $18,586,613
1992 5,496,019 $10,859,283
1993 6,778,999 $13,590,604
1994 7,294,027 $19,001,229
1995 8,669,398 $20,318,768
1996 5,271,731 $13,375,325
1997 6,988,825 $18,204,849
1998 4,636,343 $10,856,450
1999 9,004,430 $21,737,061
2000 10,334,915 $25,405,916
2001 5,254,214 $11,911,070
2002 9,969,026 $18,364,776
2003 6,167,371 $10,930,616
2004 4,880,817 $9,462,853
2005 2,354,611 $4,403,318
2006 5,736,305 $9,141,172

As can be seen above, the annual landings vary from just over 2 million pounds per year to over 10 million pounds per year. Note that Rock Shrimp are included in this count. They are an offshore species and are not a species that I am likely to encounter with my cast net although Mantis Shrimp are often misidentified as Rock Shrimp. The mantis shrimp, or stomatopod, is a flattened crustacean that has front legs modified into long, stabbing appendages. Though mantis shrimps may be eaten, the meat yield is small and of rather poor quality. They are also not my quarry.

Anatomy of a Shrimp

Brown and pink shrimps have grooves along the upper midline of the head and the upper midline of the lower region of the abdomen. The grooves on pink shrimp are slightly narrower than
those of brown shrimp. White shrimp do not have grooves, and typically have longer antennae and a longer rostrum (horn).

Postlarval and juvenile shrimp occupy the shallow, brackish waters of the sounds where they feed and grow. Growth of the young is rapid when waters are warm (above 20C). Young shrimp remain in the estuary until they approach maturity. Adult shrimp migrate offshore to spawn, and the cycle is repeated. There are seasonal variations in the spawning times of pink, brown, and white shrimp. Brown postlarvae enter the sounds in large numbers during the spring (March, April, May), with a smaller wave of immigration in the fall. Brown shrimp postlarvae that arrive on the nursery grounds in early spring will be of harvestable size by early summer. White and pink shrimp postlarvae arrive during the summer and fall, with white postlarvae being more abundant. Of the three species, white shrimp spawn closest to inshore waters with brown shrimp spawning the greatest distance from shore. Estuarine nursery areas are essential to shrimp survival, and their maintenance in a condition suitable for growth is crucial.

The two main kinds of shrimp we get here are Brown Shrimp and White Shrimp. We have caught far more White Shrimp than any other kind. White Shrimp are most readily identified by their beautiful green tails. The Spotted or Pink shrimp are mostly caught along with Brown Shrimp and are distinguished by the spots on their sides. Many locals have told us that they prefer to eat the Pinks - that they are "sweeter". They are good. We have carefully separated them from the Browns and they really may be a little sweeter, but we can't be sure that we have tasted enough of them to make a definitive statement. -yet.

Our Vegetable Garden

2008-08-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

August 18, 2008

Today is the first anniversary of our move to Morehead City. During this past year we have attempted to get into the growing cycle here for our vegetable garden and we have experienced many successes and many failures.

In Raleigh our greatest gardening adversaries were deer. Here in Morehead City our adversaries are – surprise, at least for me – rabbits.

Last winter I planted many seeds and nurtured them in flats under lights in the garage until the ground was warm enough for transplanting for the spring garden. At the same time I grew winter crops. Only a small percentage of the transplants made it. Virtually everything planted outside of the raised garden we constructed was eaten by rabbits.

My biggest disappointment was my failure to get melons (many kinds) to grow around the back yard. Cantaloupes, muskmelons, watermelons, kiwi plants, zucchini, summer squash, beans and cucumbers were all planned to be growing around the inside perimeter.

Well, the rabbits had a field day. I planted so much that I thought sure some of the baby plants would make it through, but the rabbit crop was even greater. I believe that I have identified at least four distinct generations of rabbits this year. I have pinged them with BBs, thrown cast nets over them and I have even caught one in a fish landing net. But, the only solution to their predation I have implemented that has had results was putting chicken wire fencing around planted mounds.

Our greatest successes have been the winter garden in general, butternut squash, eggplants and a late addition of yard long beans from seeds that my son, Ian, purchased in Thailand.

The winter garden was wonderful with greens, carrots, radishes, beets, rutabagas and onions. We also had a big lettuce patch and lots of Italian flat leafed parsley and cilantro.

The butternut squash was a fluke since I didn’t even plant them. Alice bought a butternut squash at the grocery store and after we ate it we dumped the seeds in a mulch pile outside. I noticed that many plants germinated from those seeds in the mulch pile so I transplanted them in various experimental places around the backyard. Miraculously, the rabbits ignored them and we have harvested many beautiful butternut squash. We have eaten them, shared them with our neighbors, have a good supply on hand and more are set and growing heartily.

We planted two kinds of eggplants. One was an Italian black beauty and the other a Japanese variety with long purple fruits. They have been very sucessful. Both are delicious and we have eaten them in various ways but we enjoy Baba ghanoush best.

Our Baba ganoush recipe:

Bake two and one half pounds of eggplant in the oven for around one hour. Put them in cold in a ceramic baking dish and cook at 400 degrees F. Let cool. Scrape the insides from the skin into a large bowl.

Add three to five garlic cloves (depends on size and strength) - in one batch I put three large regular garlic cloves and one big elephant garlic clove. I push all the garlic through a hand held garlic press.

Add six tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.

Add one and one half teaspoons of salt.

Add six tablespoons of tahini. (We're used to a pretty thick tahini that we have gotten at Food Lion for years. But, the Food Lion was out of it here in Morehed City. So, we found a brand called Shahia from Lebanon at an independent Middle eastern/Mexican grocery. The Shahia seems thinner, but has a very full sesame flavor. We reccomend it if you can find it.)

Add four and one half tablespoons of olive oil and one fourth to one half cup of chopped flat leafed Italian parsley (home grown).

We have mixed this by hand and have put it in a blender. We like it both ways.

Also, we think it tastes better if you make it a day before you eat it and let it "merge" well before eating.

The yard long beans are just becoming spectacular and are growing in their own plot along with the climbing tomatoes and a single Black Beauty Italian eggplant.

The following is a quick swing through our year of learning about vegetable gardening in this new place.

Thanksgiving 2007

My son, Stanley, and I look over the cross ties with Corey Leslie in preparation to putting together my raised vegetable garden. Stanley IV and Corey helped me set up the cross ties and locate the garden.

A week later the garden is assembled. Holes were drilled at joints large enough for rebar and pinned with 6’ long rebar. Each joint was secured by driving the rebar with a sledge hammer flush to the cross ties. We then filled the frame with 147 cubic feet of fifty per cent topsoil and fifty per cent composted horse manure. I was able to purchase the topsoil and compost from a list of local vendors suggested by Ray Harris, director of the Carteret County extension service.
The first planting in the garden was done on Sunday Dec. 2nd on the square in the top left of the garden (see above) it was densely planted with lettuce (mixed seeds left from some mixes I had done in Raleigh), cilantro (from the Mexican section of Food Lion sold as coriander), and some Italian parsley (from seeds I had gathered in Raleigh from the stand of parsley I had grown by our well house when we lived there).

On Monday Dec. 3rd I planted a row of carrots (one package) and a row of beets (one package) parallel to each other on the right side of the garden for most of the length of the garden. At the bottom of those two rows I planted three short tight rows of radishes. All of the seeds were purchased from Williams Hardware in Morehead City and were closeouts at 25 cents per package.

On Wed. Dec. 5th with a cold temperature drop to freezing expected, I completed a cold frame for the lettuce. On Thurs, Dec. 6th I completed a “hoop” system cover for the rows along the south long edge of the garden. This system is easily taken on or off as needed.

The lettuce had started coming up by Fri. Dec.7th.

Just a few days later the beets and carrots were up. And, the radishes! I thinned them several time and put the radish thinnings into salads. They were excellent!

About the middle of December I planted more. The weather, except for a brief cold snap right before Christmas during which time everything was covered, stayed pretty warm (daytime in the 70’s). And by the 27th everything was up except the second batch of carrots which were from last years bargain seed and they totally failed.

Far left row prepped for mixed greens; next row to right, mixed greens; next row to right, rutabagas; next row to right, carrots.

By January 2nd the garden looked like this.

By mid January we were having fresh lettuce, cilantro, parsley and radishes every night for supper.

Above our “hoop” rows, beets, carrots and radishes are “unbuttoned” for thinning and picking during the warmest part of a cold day. Toward the end of January, we planted a couple of rows of sweet onion sets in the middle of the garden adjacent and parallel to the cross ties the radishes are on above. Just above that and covered with myrtle branches are snow peas – three short rows, an experiment. Just past the snow peas is a short row (five cloves) of elephant garlic.
Below is the lettuce, cilantro, and Italian parsley on January 28th, 2008.

February 18, 2008

Today I planted 60 garlic cloves from regular grocery store garlic and thinned our carrots.

Yesterday I heavily thinned the beets and greens. We mixed them with lettuce, cilantro and parsley. It was a great salad!

Alice cooked the carrots below tonight– greens and all. They were so sweet.

Also, yesterday I got the first rain barrel set up. It was just in time for heavy rains today. The barrel pictured below was filled in about one half an hour and was overflowing! I had to drain it into another barrel.

April 6, 2008

Today I drilled lots of holes into a pickle barrel, and then transferred about half of the main mulch pile into it. The rest, the really dark mulch from the bottom, I put in the climbing trellis raised bed where I intend to put climbing tomatoes and kiwis.

Spring

All of the seeds I planted are up and I have been carefully hardening them by taking them outside everyday to aclimate. It is time to get them in the ground outside.

My plan is to plant one third of the raised garden in various tomatoes, one third in various eggplants and the balance in peppers. Also, I plan to put the pineapple plant that I have been nursing along inside the house in a corner of the pepper section of the garden.

In the garage I have set up a "grow house" with lights and I have raised from seed:

Brandywine Tomatoes (a heritage variety)

Juliette Tomatoes (a small "sauce" heritage variety)

Striped Italian Tomatoes

Climbing Tomatoes ( a large Seed Company Special)

Purple Japanese Eggplant

Black Italian Eggplant

Sweet Green Peppers

Jalapena Peppers

Cayenne Peppers

Yellow Squash

Zuchinni

All were transplanted to the raised garden except for the Squash and Zuchinni. I planted mounds all around the inside fence perimeter in the backyard with cantaloupes, squash, zuchinni and beans.

And as I said earlier, rabbits came out of the woodwork.

Eggplants peeping

Small butternut squash

We ate many of these just as you would yellow squash when they were small. Others turned thick skinned tan and we baked them or stored them.

We now have a new challenge for the Fall/Winter garden. My son Ian, who frequently travels with his job, has sent us a new collection of Asian seeds. They are:

Bao-Sin Kai Tsail ( a leaf heading Mustard)

Chinese White Flower Kale

Chinese Celery (looks suspiciously like cilantro in the picture on the package)

Pai-Tsai (long white stalk like Bok Choy)

Shanghai Pai-Tsai ( a green heading Chinese cabbage)

Thai Hot Pepper

More fun to come. Stayed tuned.

Brown Pelican Banding at Atlantic, NC

2008-08-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

The star east of Atlantic, NC is the approximate location of the island where the Brown Pelican banding took place

Timing is everything when banding colonial birds. To efficiently band Brown Pelicans you have to be aware of some key timing facts.

After the female Brown Pelicans lay two or three eggs both parents incubate them for around thirty days. The babies hatch looking like little purple/pink Pterodactyls. Then they are fed and given whatever parenting Brown Pelicans do for seventy-one to eighty-eight days when the chicks fledge. Shortly after their first flight they start earning their own living.

It is important to pick a banding time when these new chicks are old enough to be gently handled. Too young and a band will not fit on their small legs, or worse yet they may simply go into shock and die. Too old and they are strong and rambunctious. So, before a gang capable of banding thousands of birds is assembled someone must go into the colony and assess the timing.

Word that the timing was right had been sent to fifteen plus people. Two boats would be required.

July 1, 2008, at 7:00am

Today I met a group led by long time bird banders, John Weske and Micou Browne, at a boat landing behind Drum Inlet Seafood in Atlantic, NC. The group had gathered to band baby Brown Pelicans on an island in Core Sound roughly halfway between new Drum Inlet and Atlantic, NC. This island is closed to the public from April through August and the group leaders hold federal and state permits to band birds. They also have been granted a special permit from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission band birds on this and others of a special group of islands that the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has designated as a sanctuary for nesting colonial waterbirds.

Micou Browne and Dr. Peter Hertl loading a boat at the Drum Inlet Seafood landing

We loaded the two boats up with people bands, pliers and lots of water. Then we motored across the Core Sound. As we pulled up in the boat to our destination island, here’s how the island looked.

Because there were Black Skimmers and other shore birds nesting on the sandy low parts of this island, we carefully circled around along the wet edge of the shoreline.

In my path was this beautiful freshly dead octopus lying on the wet sand.

We walked around the perimeter of the island to the opposite side where there was an area low enough that we could climb up and have access to the central high ground portion of the island where the pelican rookery was located.

Just before we got to our entrance area Micou Browne spotted a Great Black-back Gull baby. The big chick had apparently fallen off the tidal ledge and it was hiding in a crevice along the bank.

John Weske stopped the group at the foot of the entrance area to the higher ground and talked a bit about the plan for what we were doing and then gave out assignments.

Together we then climbed up on the high portion of the island and there they were - Brown Pelicans galore!

A pair of Brown Pelican eggs on the nest

Freshly hatched Brown Pelican babies

Our task was now to carefully circle a section of the pelican rookery and cut out a group of babies. Some of our group were assigned to put bands on birds and others were assigned to capture birds and hold them for the persons banding.

A couple of small groups “cut out” for banding

I had a turn at both tasks. To capture a bird you had to grab and control a bird gently enough not to hurt them. There are several methods. The most used method was to hold the bird first by the bill. The sharp tip is the part that may scratch you if you do not have it under control. Then you hold both of the bird's wings by the wing joints closest to the bird’s back while supporting the bird from below -sometime with a hip, knee or leg. You then present the right foot to the person banding. The bander uses a special pair of pliers to fasten the bands in place.

When banding you have to first get the right leg into position to place a specially sized (for Brown Pelicans) band between the toes and the first joint. Then the bands are then squeezed tight with pliers until the two band ends butt together tightly, but do not overlap. The baby is then released with its new jewelry.

Squeezing on a band

In all, we banded seven hundred and seventy baby Brown Pelicans and were finished around 1:00pm. With two parents per bird and considering we probably missed some sneaky babies, there must have been well over two thousand birds on this island of just a couple of acres.

I have been thinking about how Brown Pelicans faced extinction from DDT poisoning in the early 1970's when there were probably fewer than fifteen viable breeding pairs toughing it out in North Carolina. Unfortunately for the Brown Pelican, one of their unusual behaviors is to stand on their eggs and wrap them with their webbed feet to incubate them rather than warm their eggs with the skin of their breasts like most other birds. If you take a look at their nests of hard sticks and shells, and then picture the incubating parent standing on top of the fragile eggs, it is not hard to understand why so very few eggs were hatched. This peculiar incubation method made them vulnerable to the effects of the pesticide DDT since the DDT made the eggshells thin. As a result, the incubating parents frequently cracked their eggs. In fact, it astonishes me that they could incubate the eggs even with thick strong eggshells.

In future posts, I intend to write more about banding and observing other coastal North Carolina birds and more about the people banding them.

One question on which I would like to invite comment is whether the anthropomorphism we project to these birds and other creatures is a good or bad thing. I hear other people banding (and I do it myself) talking to the birds - cooing trying to keep them calm.

Marie Winn in her book, Red-Tails in Love, asks some interesting questions about this subject along these lines:

- doesn't evolution show that all human characteristics with survival value have precedents in the phylogenetic past?

- don't such supremely human properties as reasoning ability and emotional complexity evolve over time? Surely they don't spring forth fully evolved?

The notion that only humans think and feel surely is a relic of Creationism - a Victorian notion.

Chime in and tell me what you think!

Nature is both beautiful and cruel. All of the baby Brown Pelicans don’t make it.

First Exploratory Trip of West End of Shackleford Banks

2008-07-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

A Calm Day on the Shackleford Banks with Cape Lookout Lighthouse at Center of Horizon

Imagine – a cold February day - you and six of your friends have just jumped into a heavy wooden double ended rowboat, and you are each pulling your oar hard into the winter Atlantic Ocean trying to clear the shore break waves of the Shackleford Banks. Behind you on the beach another friend is on top of one of the tallest sand dunes. He is shouting directions to your boat about the pod of whales moving your way.

If your crew can get the rowboat moving fast enough you will intercept the whales about one mile offshore. Everybody groans and breaks into a sweat.

The whales are moving slowly - calmly swimming along - dawdling. You hear them breathe and they blow water and mist high up into the air.

As you draw closer one of your buddies, probably named Guthrie, Willis, or Lewis, drops his oar and scurries to the bow. He picks up a heavy iron harpoon, flexes and loosens up a bit, and gets ready to strike one of the whales. There is not just one whale, mind you, but a group of whales and you are headed dead on toward the largest one – over fifty feet long. Just as it appears you are going to ram the whale, your buddy in front jams the harpoon deep into the whale. And, all hell breaks loose.

Some years ago my friend gave me a copy of an article published under title: "The Pursuit of Leviathan : A History of Whaling on the North Carolina Coast " by Marcus B. Simpson, Jr. and Sallie W. Simpson. It had been published in the North Carolina Historical Review, Volume LXV, Number 1, January, 1988. This article is about the history of whaling in North Carolina.

I skimmed it at the time and filed it away for “later”.

In late August of 2007 my wife and I moved from Raleigh, NC to Morehead City, NC. While unpacking I rediscovered the whaling article.

I reread it as I now realized that this was important local history for my new home.

From this article I discovered that the whaling scene I imagined above probably took place off the Shackleford Banks many times with many variations again and again for over two hundred years.

Unlike the New Englanders, the whalers on Shackleford did their hunting from the shore. And when they were successful, they had to drag their prize back to the beach.

Sometimes they may have been five or six miles offshore before their battle was over. During those short late winter and early spring days, the height of the whaling season, the afternoon sun would have been dropping fast or even may have been gone by the time they got back to the beach.

As they approached the surf line they then had to figure out how to get the huge whale carcass through the breakers and up onto the beach to process. It probably wasn’t unusual to have attracted assorted fish, crabs and sharks looking for a free lunch. That would have made it even more exciting.

Finally they would get the whale in position to process. Processing would mean cutting and mincing the fat, or blubber, from the creature and rendering it in huge fifty gallon vats. Then they strained and filtered it. The product, whale oil for lamps and lubrication, would then be packed in barrells for sale in Beaufort, NC. Remember, this was pre-petroleum.

North Carolinians, and southerners generally, would probably not find this “processing” dissimilar from rendering pig lard in the manner of traditional Carolina fall pig killings.

The fire would be started with the locally plentiful red cedar. Unlike rendering lard, once the rendering got going the “cracklins” would be removed and used to stoke the fire. Pig cracklins would, of course, be eaten.

Also, processing would include removing the baleen, the whales’ food strainers, which would be sold to be fashioned into combs and corset stays.

A strong, almost overwhelming smell would accompany all of the work.

The men who followed this trade were necessarily strong and self confident. And, for several hundred years many of these men lived with their families just behind the dunes along the Shackleford Banks. At the peak of the Shackleford whaling trade there were five villages along this eight mile stretch of unique west to east beach. Before the great hurricane of 1899 Diamond City on the eastern end nearest the Cape Lookout Light had over five hundred people living there.

Modern development of the Shackleford Banks was averted when the Cape Lookout National Seashore was authorized on March 10, 1966.

While fishing in the area, I had passed this beautiful stretch of our Carolina coastline many times, but I had never actually gone onto the beach and touched my feet to the sand.

Alice and I talked about visiting the Shackleford Banks frequently as we learned a bit here and there about the area. And, on a beautiful day in December we got our little jon boat ready, hooked up the boat and trailer, put our dog in the car and drove to Beaufort. On this first exploration our goal was to get a good look at the west end of Shackleford.

December 29, 2007

Alice, Baby and I put our jon boat in the water at the public boat ramp on Taylor Creek in Beaufort this morning and headed out to the west end of Shackleford Banks. As we motored along the creek rust colored ponies grazed along the water’s edge of Carrot Island.

After clearing Lenoxville Point at the east end of the Town of Beaufort we headed southwest down the channel toward the rock jetty on the west end of the back side of the Shackleford Banks. Through the bright clear air we could see Shackleford Banks a mile or so across the water. Although the sky was blue and the temperature was around 70F, a change was coming. Before we arrived back at the boat ramp some four and a half hours later the edge of a grey and cloudy weather front had moved in completely changing the light and bringing a much cooler and brisker wind.

As we approached the back of Shackleford Banks we could see a cluster of boats anchored up around the rock jetty by the National Park Service’s Visitor’s Dock. They were fishing for speckled trout. Before we left I asked one of the fishermen how his luck had been. He told me that he had caught a lot of fish. In fact, he said they had eaten all of his shrimp. Unfortunately, he had caught only two trout big enough too keep. The size limit for speckled trout is 12 inches. We saw a number of fish caught. All of the fish we saw appeared to be small.

We anchored up on the beach just east of the rock jetty and National Park Service Dock and checked out the National Park Service’s maps, diagrams, regulations and other information posted on a couple of big signs along the shoreline. Dogs must be leashed, don’t feed the ponies, etc.

The NPS maintains the dock for their use and for private ferry vendors to land their passengers. They also have composting bathrooms there.

There is a well marked trail across the island. It looks as if the Park Ranger must drive around on some kind of four wheel motor cycle, ATV or the like as there are all kinds of wheel ruts disturbing the trails leaving them very soft and difficult for people on foot.

We walked straight south across the strand to the ocean. It was a longer walk than we had anticipated. From looking at maps I thought it would be a rather short distance. When I got home I rechecked the distance on a map and determined it to be around one-half mile. But, walking across on the trail of soft sand and climbing up and down four or five rows of good sized dunes, made the little hike seem much harder and longer.

There were pony tracks everywhere and once we walked about half way over to the ocean we were surprised to also see lots of deer tracks. When we reached the last dune before the beach we saw a lot of raccoon tracks leading right down to the surf line.

There were several flat meadow areas between dunes where we imagined houses from the old whaling communities once stood. In some places remnants of cedar fence posts still bore witness to their past utility.

We also discovered a couple of plots maybe 40 X 40 feet where the NPS had fenced in small areas to keep the ponies out. We imagined they use these test plots to comparatively judge the extent of the environmental damage that the ponies cause. That damage appeared to us to be considerable. On a later trip this was confirmed by a young woman who was there with the NPS studying the ponies.

When we topped the last large sand dune and viewed the ocean we were surprised at how narrow the beach seemed. The tide was near full high and the ocean was very white and rough.

We noted that in the future we would need to plan shelling trips for the low tide.

Looking east toward Cape Lookout we could not see the lighthouse less than eight miles away. I think there was so much spray from the surf that it impeded our low line of sight visibility even though it was still bright clear day.

Down the beach toward Cape Lookout we saw an injured loon crawling from the surf line. I instinctively wanted to check it out, but we decided not to get any nearer since our dog, Baby, was with us.

We walked back checking out the numerous pony trails. The interior of that part of the island had very sparse vegetation and seemed rather barren. Alice and I both wondered what it must have looked like when the island was covered with a forest.

We then loaded back into our jon boat and rode along the shoreline eastward toward Mullet Pond. Just east of Mullet Pond a thick maritime forest begins. We pulled ashore near the edge of the forest and walked in toward the ocean side. This part of the island was lush with beautiful red cedar groves, stands of red bay, and yaupon holly with spectacular displays of red berries.

The yaupon holly is a native plant and is a locally important wildlife food. The local Indians used the foliage of this shrub for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. It was called the “black drink” and it is high in caffeine. It was also used by the Indians to cause vomiting as described by the species name, Ilex vomitoria.

The long time locals recognize yaupon’s medicinal value. One of them, Ira Lewis of nearby Harkers Island, gave the following recipe for Yaupon Tea to the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center at Harkers Island. I discovered it in the local newspaper.

Yaupon Tea:

Leaf Preparation

Strip the outer small leaves of the branch and chop the leaves into little pieces

To Parch

Heat the leaves in medium-to-hot (400 degrees F) skillet or pan. Turn leaves often for about 15 minutes, or until they turn a light or medium brown color. (If leaves start to smoke remove immediately) Remove from heat to cool

Brewing

Use one cup of parched yaupon leaves to one to one and a half quarts of boiling water. Cook on low boil until water turns a dark amber color. Strain and add sugar and or lemon if desired. Serve hot or chilled

Brewed leaves may be dried and reused for a weaker tea.

The trees were bustling with small birds chirping and flitting about. I could identify only a few as these were not typical feeder type birds. Birds I could identify were mockingbirds, bluejays and towhees. We decided that we would definitely be better prepared with bird guides and binoculars when we returned. We also saw piles of shells that we took to be as evidence of raccoon feasts along the backside shoreline.

As beautiful as it was, the shoreline was heavily littered with beer and soft drink cans, all kinds of plastic and styrofoam, and other miscellaneous trash. We found a large mesh onion sack and filled it with as much trash as we could stuff into it and humped it back to a Beaufort public trash receptacle. We barely made a dent in the mess.

After a short exploration of these beautiful woods we then got back into the boat and headed further eastward toward Whale Creek. Suddenly the shallow water of two to five feet deep we had been traveling in dropped out to twenty to twenty-six feet deep and ahead in the water we spotted a pod of around a dozen bottlenosed dolphins.

We cut the outboard and drifted along with the current while the dolphins rolled around us blowing mist into the air while making their breathing sounds. It appeared that most of the dolphins had either new or very young companions right by their side. Some of the dolphins seemed half the size of the adults and others were a good bit smaller than that, maybe one fourth the size of the adult. We figured that there must be at least two separate age groups of the babies.

The dolphins finally moved away from us and we started the motor and headed back along the shoreline westward toward the rock jetty. By now we could see a dark weather front bearing down on us so we hightailed it back across the couple of miles of open water to Lenoxville Point.

Upon entering the Taylor Creek “no wake” zone, we slowed way down and putted back toward the public ramp. As we neared the ramp a group of egrets caught our attention on the Carrot Island/Rachel Carson Estuarine Research Reserve side of the creek. And upon closer inspection, we saw that there were more than egrets. There were also as a number of interesting looking herons including several Black-Crowned Night Herons.

It was a beautiful outing. Fishgirl, fishdog and I all thank the Gods for giving us the day.

Labels: First Exploratory Trip of West End of Shackleford Banks

First Fishing Trip

2008-07-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Starting with a little fishing trip.

The First Jon Boat Trip with Fishgirl and Fishdog

I finally finished fixing up the Jon Boat to the point where I could put it in the water and use it on Friday, September 7th, 2007.

So, Alice, our dog Baby and I put the boat in the water at the public boat ramp by the Community College here in Morehead City. The ramp was crowded and there were no places to park the car and trailer after I offloaded the boat into the water. I ended up squeezing between two big trucks that were each overflowing into the next space leaving a VERY narrow slot. Thought I was going to have to slip out the window, but was able to squeeze out.

First, we motored down the Intracoastal Waterway to a shallow area in front of the public access park on Holly Lane near our house. I had seen many schools of perfect sized finger mullet there in the morning. I used my cast net to catch a good bunch, put the mullet in a bucket and then we ran east to the causeway bridge to Atlantic beach.

The battery for the fish finder was almost dead so I was turning it off and on frequently as I motored around the bridge pilings looking for bait pods.

At first the falling tide was moving out very fast. There was a big concentration of baitfish showing on the fishfinder on the down current side of the bridge’s main passthrough south side pilings.

I anchored up the Jon Boat under the shadow of the bridge to keep us out of the direct sun and started fishing. Soon I caught a rather nice skate and carefully released him - then another. As beautiful as they were, I really wanted to catch a flounder. So, I repositioned the boat dropping back even closer to the baitfish pod and reset the anchor. I then put two live finger mullet over the side. One bait was hooked through the top of the eye socket on a carolina rig and the other hooked the same way but on a flounder rig with a float to get the bait off the bottom slightly. Same hooks, 2/0 Kahles were used on each. The flounder rig was set closest to the pilings. I hooked yet another skate on the carolina rig but he broke off. I think the leader was frayed from the other skates. Then I hooked a flounder on the float rig which was closer to the pilings. The fish was very scrappy as big flounder can be, and to my horror I realized that I did not bring a landing net. Luckily, I was able to get my Boga Grip into the fish’s mouth and hoist him aboard. He was very thick.

Fishgirl, Fishdog and I ate him in fish tacos and in stuffed Poblano peppers. He was delicious!

We thank the Fish Gods