Friday, June 6, 2008

Brewster Fauna

This is another look back at Memorial Day weekend. I finally got some pix for you.

Why go to the Cape at all? Well, the kids have a great time, just like the adults. Here is E and his friend K, laughing it up at the beach. (Like all pictures here, you can click on it for a modestly larger view. If you want full resolution, let me know.) Let me confess this shot was a staged a bit to help capture the real fun they had all the rest of the time. We won't get into why they're laughing at me.


Last year I discovered that horseshoe crabs mate off the beach here. I was pulling up crabs as they raced by, to show to K and E. I found a monster one and started pulling it up. Then I realized that it had an extra body segment and put it back down. I had a guess, and later confirmed that this was a mating pair. The smaller male has specialized legs to grasp the female, and they apparently run around like that for a while. This year, on a sandbar at low tide, I saw a number of crabs like the one here. At first I feared they were dead, perhaps a post-mating die-off, like drone bees? Then I realized the crabs were pairs, with the female (wisely) dug into the sand, and they were apparently in good health. The male tail would swing around if provoked. I guess they were just caught by the tide, dug in, and will run around again when the tide turns. They really seem prehistoric! For scale, my (wide flat) size 10 footprint is in the foreground. Notice the bird footprints; I think they were really after the passengers on the crabs, not the pair itself.


I'll end with two shots of my bike as I rode it there. You can see how clean the bike trail was - a normal rainy road ride (like today's commute) makes the bike really dirty. The last pic is my crowded "dashboard" for the rare solo night ride on unfamiliar roads. From left to right: GPS navigator, main headlight, cadence/distance/speedometer, blinky/redundant front light, and heart rate monitor on the bottom [stem]. No more gadgets until I grow wider shoulders! [Road handlebar width is supposed to match shoulder width.]

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