Port Mansfield Kayaking Blow-Off-Work Day

Did I have lots to do yesterday? Yes! Did I do any of it? No! I went kayaking, instead. The pic above is a hermit crab in a fetching springtime shell done in salmon, umber and ivory. There were thousands upon thousands of these guys in the ubiquitous salty shallows on the dredge islands I visited. The whole day was a lovely experience. Kayaking, open stretches, exploration, photography, awesome animals… this day had quite a lot of the things I love.

Here’s a map of where I went:

View Larger Map

Coolest thing of the trip? I kayaked with dolphins! OK, near dolphins. A pod of 4 or so. I took a horrible jerky video of it, and I never got closer than about 20 meters, so it’s not great video… but it was extremely excellent, anyway.

After the cut, pictures of some other stuff, like gorgeous herons.

This here specimen is very ordinary, as birds in the region go. I think it’s some kind of seagull, but what do I know? Mostly this picture is here because I think it’s one of my nicer bird shots:

These succulents covered a good portion of the dredge islands. Boring pic? Maybe, but the plants themselves were pretty cool. They made a chunky green carpet across large areas of these tiny, windswept islands, making for a nice contrast with what appeared otherwise to be almost a desert:

And now, as promised, herons and lots of them. Most of the herons I saw (at least I think they’re herons) were this reddish-purplish kind:

However, there were the standard-looking ones (great blue herons? I really should look this up…):

and some beautiful kinds that were all black, gray, white and stripey:

And that’s that. I have some more (and better) photos I want to post here eventually (mostly of herons), but for now I’ll just leave a photo of an uncooperative osprey. I first saw him when I kayaked up to the westernmost dredge island, and he was fishing in the shallows. Very large bird. But I was in the kayak, the camera was in the drybag in the day hatch… I tried, but he had flown away before I even got the bag open. The best shot I got of him was this faraway flying picture. It makes a nice punctuation mark.