Picnic at the beach

On the way to another favourite beach for a picnic, we watched a farmer doing some adjustment to the plow he pulled behind his tractor. This time of year is busy for the people who grow our food. 

We stopped at French River as well to watch the boats coming home and spotted a female Belted Kingfisher in the trees watching the shoreline. She was a beauty.

Our destination, the beach at Yankee Hill, the site of the New London Lighthouse, is an area where fishing boats enter a channel to return to French River and other ports along the coast. 

The boats are only a few meters from shore and we love to watch their progress through the channel. We visit here several times every year.

A well used path from the parking lot crosses the dunes which are undisturbed otherwise. I took this photo of driftwood without doing any damage to the Marram grass.

We had our portable table and chairs with us and set them up for a great view of the channel entrance. Before long boats were passing mere metres from us, headed home.

In addition, as we ate, a Bald Eagle flew overhead and disappeared down the beach. Meanwhile, we could see hundreds of cormorants on a sandbar and pylons in the channel. As we ate, we watched the huge flock take flight.

Shortly after, fog emanated from the sand, creating an eerie look of smoke on the water, like the lyrics of the old song.

Even the boats released fog in their wake.

Before we left, I photographed the old pylons in the channel to compare their condition to last year. In the photos I noticed a Bald Eagle sat atop a pylon, surveying his domain. Did its presence scare off the cormorants?

The wonder of island beaches keeps us returning again and again.