Another cold, brilliant day for a walk on the beach last weekend. I’d never been to Salisbury before, but a friend invited me to join the outing organized by one of her Meetup groups, and I’m so glad that I did. Among other things, I saw my very first snowy owl! Not pictured here, unfortunately, as I only got a very distant shot of it with my phone, and a distant white dot isn’t very impressive. We saw it quite close up at one point–not on purpose! It was hanging out right by the wooden walkway as we were coming back across the dunes, and we didn’t even see it until it flew off.
Salisbury Beach, 12 February 2022
We also saw sandpipers, and quite a few ducks I could not identify. One person is sure they saw a seal’s nose while we were near the mouth of the Merrimack.Really beautiful day, and another wonderful local area I didn’t know about before.
I experimented with using my regular camera for this excursion, as I have gotten fed up with my phone. The glare outside makes it impossible to see what I’m taking pictures of, my gloves’ contact patches never work, so I have to keep taking them off, which on a day like that one is actually painful, and the battery is always dead by the time I get back to my car. The camera doesn’t have any of those problems.
R Jean Stevenson 