November Beaches, Part the Sixth.

Another advantage to autumn and winter beaches is that you can actually do some decent beach combing. They rake the beaches during the tourist season, scraping off trash and treasure alike...

Purple sea glass!

And sometimes the trash can be the treasure...

"X" marks the spot!

November Beaches, Part V.

One major advantage to walking the beach in late fall is that the beach looks like a beach should, with all kinds of interesting stuff left on it by the wind and tide...

November Beaches, Part 4.

Let's go back to Seven Mile Island (Avalon and Stone Harbor)... Click on 'em to bigify photos.

Thousands of shorebirds (mostly Dunlin, a few Black-bellied Plovers, and at least one Ruddy Turnstone) amassing on the beaches in Avalon... See that squarish shadow on the horizon to the right? That's Atlantic City, about 40 or so miles north.

A lovely day for a sail!

Dunlin. (Why are my best shots entirely due to pure luck...?)

 Very quiet surf this day, but still enough to kick up a bit of froth.

And to make interesting patterns in the sand...

(Along with some help from a few of those peeps...)

November Beaches III.

Cape May Point's beaches are so manipulated (in order to protect the towns there) that pretty much the only natural thing about them is that there is an ocean at the bottom. But the dunes aren't doing too badly...

Goldenrod.

Shrooms in sand! Bit surprising...

They just keep adding sand... Good for the dunes, bad for the beach profile.

November Beaches, Part the Second.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Avalon and Stone Harbor, for the most part, have very good policies regarding dunes and their importance...

November Beaches, Part 1.

It's a good thing that the local beaches still have much to see even in winter, given that that's about the earliest I get down to them. Far fewer people and much more natural stuff, and the weather holds out long enough to actually make the trip pleasant... So here's the start of a series of photos from some beach walking I did during a week in early November.

I don't understand the visual draw of an endless, relatively empty ocean, but sitting listening to the planet's heartbeat--that I get...

Veterans' Day.

To all who have served... May your sacrifices never be forgotten.