Krysta's Nature Journal

(Sorry, I didn't manage to get any pictures.)

Today I had the sweet pleasure of experiencing:

• An up-close aerial show put on by 30-something brown pelicans. There were so many of them all perched on the old pilings from a long-destroyed pier. I stopped paddling the kayak and let the wind and waves push me closer to the birds. Once I was 6-12 feet away they would spread their wings a fly. Then to the group on those pilings over there, and the show would be repeated.

• A raccoon by my side. A wild one, too. I was sitting on a tree at the water's edge. The tree's trunk was horizontal and the root system (still living) was hanging out over the water, with the water flowing up underneath it. I was sitting right next to the roots when, around the bend of grass, comes a cute little raccoon. He appeared about fifteen feet away from me, and meandered along in the shallows and on the tiny beach. I sat perfectly still and watched him. The fur on his legs was soaked with water. He found a shell and picked it up, then left it. He kept coming towards me, right up to me, right in front of me, less than a foot away. Then he disappeared beneath the roots of the tree, right underneath me! I never saw him come out, but when I looked under there myself, I couldn't see him.

• A hopping squirrel. I was wrapping up my nature walk when I noticed a squirrel conspicuously perched in the middle of the grassy field. I spied an opportunity, and so called upon my stalking skills (still working on those, by the way). I cut the distance while he was looking the other way, and crept up behind him when he had jumped into the grass and underbrush. He moved around a bit, and went from one tree to another, climbed up a bit, climbed down, then up another tree. But the cool thing was that then he gathered himself and hopped from one tree to the next, 3 or 4 feet away. I watched him hop about 7 or 8 different trees. Perhaps this is boring to you, but I've never seen a squirrel hop the way this one did [perhaps I haven't been looking?]. But he really did jump like some sort of tree frog or something. So cool!