The Mast-Head: For the Birds
Shorebirds, sanderlings, probably, dashed ahead of the uprushing water at Wiborg’s Beach on Monday evening as storm waves broke all the way out to the horizon. Hermine, which started as a tropical depression in the Florida Straits about a week earlier, had crossed into the Atlantic and by then had drifted to within 200 miles of Long Island.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center began paying close attention to the system on Aug. 28, first calling it tropical depression nine. By last Thursday it had strengthened to a tropical storm and was threatening the Gulf Coast of Florida. Hermine eventually made landfall near St. Marks, Fla., with winds of about 80 miles an hour.
On Saturday, after Hermine’s winds had declined, it popped out on the Atlantic side, regaining some strength and starting a halting course more or less northward into our area. By the beginning of the week, the forecasters were calling Hermine a post-tropical cyclone, meaning that it was no longer behaving like a tropical storm and was not nearly a hurricane. Its effects began to be really felt here on Labor Day, with fast moving clouds, light rain, and a riled-up ocean.
Although much of the weekend crowd had left early because of news reports and an evacuation order issued in error by the county, there were plenty of people on the beach, watching the spectacle and taking pictures with their phones.
The sanderlings seemed nonchalant, racing in on their fast little feet to probe in the sand as a wave receded, then taking wing and flying quickly back up the beach when an other wave approached. Their quick reactions probably explain why they appear indifferent to us on the beach.
Shorebirds are a tough lot. There’s one that I sometimes see on the rock jetties at Georgica taking waves on the head as it picks around the seaweed for something to eat. With all the invertebrates to be had, a dunking is well worth it, in an evolutionary sense.
The sanderlings were at it again when I checked the beach the next morning. We might head to the shore to look in awe at the power of it all; for the birds it is an abundant free meal.