Black Oyster Catcher nest on the Wild Coast

The Wild Coast is all about the rugged coastline, beautiful beaches, rolling green hills, dramatic waterfalls, spectacular river mouths, friendly and hospitable people.  So in fact that many visitors often miss the little things.  And y'all know how I can go on about not just looking at the bigger picture when you are travelling.

A little while ago I was staying at Wavecrest Hotel and took an early morning walk down to the river mouth.  It was raining all night and the morning was cloudy and gloomy so I left my camera in my room and just went to enjoy the fresh air.  Close to the river mouth I watched a pair of Black Oyster Catchers eyeballing me awhile making a heck of a lot of noise.  I realised that they must have a nest close by but what interested me more was how close I was to them without them flying off.  Darn, and me without my camera.  So I schlepped back to the hotel to fetch my camera and headed back to the beach.  As I was approaching one was walking around between the boulders and on spotting me flew back to its mate making a lot of noise again.  Now I know that is how they try to lure any potential danger to a nest away from it so I decided to have a look.      

I approached the area carefully as I have never seen a Black Oyster Catcher nest before and wasn't sure what to look for.  And suddenly there it was right in front of me.  By my footprints I actually passed not more than two meters away from it earlier before fetching my camera.

The camouflage was amazing but more amazing was the fact that the nest was nothing more than a slight hollow in the sand filled with shells and pebbles. 

I didn't want to get too close as (future) mom and dad was swearing at me from nearby so I popped the long lens on the camera to get one last closeup before giving them their space back.  Isn't that scene just a work of art?

The little things on the Wild Coast

I'm a big advocate of keeping one's eyes open for the little things as much as the big stuff.  Spending a night at Kob Inn on the Wild Coast I went for an afternoon stroll down to the Qora River and while the coastline and river held my attention, I still spotted this little scene.  The more delicate side of the Wild Coast.

A walk along the beach in Jeffrey's Bay

What good is a morning meeting in Jeffrey's Bay with perfect early summer weather if one can't leave a little earlier and go for a walk on the beach? Yeh, says me too.  Early morning and not a breath of air in Port Elizabeth so I took a chance and left just after 7am to give myself a bit of time for a walk along the beach at Kabeljous.

The tide was low and water was flowing out of the lagoon through the Kabeljous River mouth.  The stream flowed quite strong but I noticed others crossing through where the river and sea met.  I tried it and found that it was no deeper than my knee.  The walk was on.

The Kabeljous Lagoon, not quite as full at low tide, with the Jeffrey's Bay wind farm in the distance.

On the far side of the lagoon where the dunes start I found this pyramid of stones.  Curiosity got the better of me, it usually does, and I decided to investigate.

A lot of the rocks were painted and has beautiful messages, some actually very inspirational, written on them.  It makes one even more curious about who placed it there.  My guess, either the local school or youth groups that often have weekend camps in the town.

The view over the Kabeljous Valley from the top of the sand dune...

... and looking back towards Jeffrey's Bay.

I always urge people to not just look for the big stuff but also the little things as well.  There is often as much, if not more, beauty in the little things than the big stuff.

Plough snail trails

Now you tell me you wouldn't want to do this on a warm windless morning.  I wonder when my next meeting in Jbay is...

Discovering Lauries Bay in Port Elizabeth

The South African coastline stretches over 2500 km (give or take a couple of km) from the desert border with Namibia to the subtropical border with Mozambique.  I say give or take a couple of km as I have seen exact distances given of between 2798 km and 3751 km.  Whichever it is, its a heck of a piece of coastline varying between long sandy stretches, rugged inaccessible areas, rural and uninhabited beaches and developed pieces in populated areas.  This all means that there are big parts of our coastline that most of us will probably never get to see.  Closer to home, Port Elizabeth has over 40 kilometers of beaches.  Beaches, not coastline.  This means that I haven't even seen the whole of my home town's coastline.  I recently got to tick off another piece of that from my list when I visited Lauries Bay on the Wildside near Kini Bay and Seaview.  Lauries Bay is a group of "shacks" (as their owners call them) located on private land.  The only way to get there is if you know somebody who has a "shack" there and they open the gate for you - which was how we got to go in - or to walk along the beach from Kini Bay. 

Sea monsters off Port Elizabeth

 

Is there such a thing as sea monsters?  Huge tentacled beasts dragging ships in under the waves, long necked dinosaur like animals who survived millions of years in the deep or scaly monsters with huge teeth so terrifying that Great White Sharks flee in fear?  A morning's hiking around the Cape Recife Nature Reserve in Port Elizabeth nearly had me thinking twice that I have found proof.

Walking along the Algoa Bay side of the reserve I spotted a spiky spine visible amongst the waves.  I started to get excited and snapped a couple of pics before looking at it carefully again.  It seemed to stay in the same spot and rather than moving about it was the waves that washed over it making it look like it was moving.  Turned out to be the remains of one of the many shipwrecks found along this piece of coastline.  Darn! So close.

About 30 minutes later out on the southern side of Cape Recife I saw something very peculiar lying on the beach.  Dark in colour what what looked like a leathery skin and sharp white teeth... Finally I have my proof!  Unfortunately for the Indiana Jones explorer and discoverer in me it turned out to be the dried out remains of a dolphin that washed up on the beach some time before. Darn again! Oh well, I will have to wait a little while longer before I make my big "ground breaking", "world news creating" and "instant fame" discovery. 

Penguins under pressure

Last week I saw a stunning yet very sad picture by Luc Hosten on Facebook.  Two days later I was down at Cape Recife in Port Elizabeth and came across the scene photographed by Luc.  The penguin wasn't in the same position anymore and I didn't want to try and recreate the exact scene anyway, so decided on something similar yet slightly further away.  African Penguins are highly endangered and under immense pressure at the moment with some people giving them only 5 years if nothing major is done soon.  The guys at SAMREC in Cape Recife do an awesome job with limited resources but they desperately need the support of the public and corporates to keep them up and running.

A shell along the shore

Seven of us from work went for a walk along the Sacramento Trail just outside Port Elizabeth the other day.  We were lucky to choose the perfect day with the warm winter sun shining down on us.  I had two cameras hanging around my neck so I was clicking away all the way for both work and pleasure.  As usual my eyes were all over the show looking for stuff to photograph and I spotted the big orange and black shell from miles (ok, not miles but at least 50 meters or so) away.  I don't think my colleagues even saw it but as soon as I got there I was down on my tummy trying to get the best shot.  By the time I was done the rest of the group was just about out of sight, but that is what getting THE photo about.

Sunfish on the beach

Taking a walk along Noordhoek Beach in the Cape I stumbled on a dead sunfish.  This was only a baby, but still something very unusual to see washed up.  Sunfishes are so called because of their habit of drifting at the surface as if basking in the sun.  There are two species of sunfishes found in the waters surrounding Cape Town, the Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) and the Sharptail Sunfish (Masturus lanceolatus).  Now I'm no sunfish expert so I'm not going to guess which one this was.  Looking at its tail though it could possibly be a Sharptail Sunfish.  Sharptail sunfishes are found only in warmer waters though, thus extremely rare in local waters.  So I'm not guessing.  Sunfish can grow up to 3m in length and a weight of 2 000 kilograms. 

Orange shell on the beach

Not much to say about an orange shell lying on the beach. 

Sea pumpkin on the beach

Before a sea pumpkin becomes a ... well, sea pumpkin, it spends it's life as a spiky sea urchin living in a rock pool or gully somewhere on the coast.  But once the creature inside the shell dies the spikes fall off and only a green "pumpkin" looking shell is left behind.  These sea pumpkins are very popular with people, specially kids, picking up shells.

Jellyfish for lunch

I've posted about Plough Shells before (here and here) but I can never get enough of these very interesting creatures living in the sand below the high and low tide mark.  On a visit to Dana Bay near Mossel Bay in the Western Cape we found literally hundreds of them feeding on a dead jelly fish.

I always feel so sorry for these little guys when a wave pushes the water up the beach and wash them away from their meal.  But they persist and turn right around, heading straight back for more.

This picture is to show the size of the jelly fish and to give you an idea how big the plough shells are.

Plough Shells cleaning out

Talk about licking out your plate when you done.  A couple of Plough Shells cleaning out a mussle shell dropped on the beach by a Black Oyster Catcher.

"Heads up", its an urchin...

Sea urchins are normally found in rock pools and when alive have sharp spikes all over... so watch out not to step in one cause it may lead to jumping around on one leg holding on to a painful foot.  I found this urchin that has already lost it's spikes in a pool near the Knysna Heads and perched it on a rock for a picture with one of the Heads in the background.

Jellyfish and fishermen

A piece of jellyfish on the beach at Dana Bay near Mossel Bay with a couple of fishermen in the background

Footprints

Today I'm posting pictures of two distict sets of footprints on the beach

The first one is that of Chaos Boy running on the beach at Dana Bay near Mossel Bay...

... while the second is that (well, can't really call it a set, more like a trail) of a plough snail

Sea weed

I saw sea weed by the sea shore, sea weed I saw by the score

Purple jellyfish

Drama Princess has developed a fascination for jellyfish washed up on the beach.  She was even more intrigued when we found this peculiar purple one on the beach in Mossel Bay.

Sand shark

I found this shark washed up on the beach a little while ago and the first thought that crossed my mind was that it's a sand shark. There are actual sharks called sand sharks, but that's not why I thought it. Sand shark. Get it?

Gannet of flight past

I know this isn't the happiest of pictures, but it still fascinated me when I saw it and I couldn't help taking a picture of it. It is a dead Cape Gannet which was washed up on the rocks at high tide. I have actually posted another dead gannet photo before (macabre isn't it?) which can be seen here.

This picture was paired with a poem called Death by Benjamin Saccaggi on The Poetry Project website.

DEATH

The panorama is mesmerising
And the air clear and clean
As nature stretches away forever
Into the blue horizon
Each plant and animal
A long history of survival
The struggle of life
And the anguish of death

How much of this will we destroy?
In our sad, desperate attempts
To find meaning in the world
Meaning in ourselves
How much of the world will we destroy?
With our unquenchable thirst for wealth
What will be the price?
How much life will die?
How much of ourselves will we kill?

Caught in the crossfire
Of ever warring monies
Spilling our blood perpetuating the system
And when we’re done?
When we’ve destroyed our world?
Devoured its beauty
And consumed ourselves

Silence

As the dying breath of the last man
Whispers his regret at extinguishing the fire
Leaving nothing but the cold winds of space
To blow ceaselessly over thoughtless bones

Silence

With the flickering death of the last flame
Dies what was once beauty
And life
And consciousness

Silence

On the rocks

I haven't done a Random ... theme post for a while now. So I decided to do one called Random on the rocks (no whiskey or brandy featured in this post though). On our recent visit to Cannon Rocks we had lots of time to explore the rock pools along the beach. I took all three of these within a short space of time around one of the rock pools.

For some reason I can't remember what these are called, but I am sure Zane will help me out.

Some kind of Coral

Mussles