(no subject)

[camwyn]

Took the kayak out again after work today. Managed to circumnavigate Snake Island, admittedly at high tide. There was one brief moment of SKROONK as I grazed a rock on the bottom- I wasn't paying attention to how shallow the water was- but no damage got done. I also saw these birds, which took me ages to identify online. Apparently they live on the island. (I didn't disturb any nests- I never came ashore. They were flying near me and went back to land when I passed.) I'll have to be more careful in the area and keep my eyes open for more species, and not disturb anything if I can avoid it. That's their land, not mine.

Been debating whether I should name the kayak or not. Regular boats get names, I know, but do little inflatable paddle boats get named?

Comments

[bjornwilde]

Does the kayak mean something to yes? If so, name it. At least that's always been my motto and why my car has a name as well as my bike...which I really need to get back on. Poor girl is languishing in the garage.

[camwyn]

It's not so much the meaning things to me aspect as the seagoing tradition of boats having names. When I put the kayak in the water there's a whole lot of people's sailboats stretched out between me and the rest of the harbor- my put-in point is between a yacht club and somebody's house- and virtually all the sailboats have names painted across their sterns. I realize that most of that is probably because the boats have to be registered with an authority or something, rather than because of tradition, but it still seems rather as if I ought to respect the Way Things Are Done on the water even if the Way I'm Doing Things involves futzing around with a hand pump just to make the boat seaworthy.

My bikes, I admit, both have names; this is because I tend to think of them as steeds. One was named for the Army bumper sticker I saw on a car when I was busting my butt to get up a hill in Bayonne (Oorah); the other was good and sturdy and solid and felt like it would be useful for a long, long time, which is why it's named Figure, after the foundation sire of the Morgan breed of horses.

[bjornwilde]

I'm trying to think if rowboats get names now and I can't recall.

[in_the_blue]

Oh, man, I love oystercatchers. Out here on the west coast we have a different variety (black oystercatchers). They're so much fun to watch, their antics are endlessly amusing.

I'm not a big fan of naming inanimate objects, but (har har) whatever floats your boat...

[camwyn]

I've been seeing a lot of birds out here I just don't recognize. I'm still not entirely clear on what bird of prey I saw on Deer Island- I didn't get a picture of it, but its markings didn't match any of the ones I know, and when I put what little I saw of the bird's markings and size through whatbird.com's search engine the only two real matches it found were northern goshawks and peregrine falcons, and there's only about thirty pairs of peregrines in the entire state of Massachusetts. The oystercatchers, I happened to see enough of yesterday to make a positive ID from an online database of shorebirds- and it helps that I've seen the area at low tide and can vouch for the fact that the mud flats are full of clams, razor clams, and snails, so it's not as if they're in the wrong place for their diet. Apparently oystercatchers are only here during the summer months, or something like that. Which, cool. It's a good place to spend the summer.

As far as the naming goes, in this case it's more a matter of 'every single boat in the harbor has a name, and I know it's a maritime tradition to name boats and large ships- does the tradition also apply to much smaller vessels that can be inflated with a hand pump in fifteen minutes'. Plus, I've been rereading old Tolkien for the past week, mostly of the Book of Lost Tales and History of Middle-Earth series, and the characters in his work are even more prone to naming things than the Norse gods. That kinda leaves a mark on the brain too.

[in_the_blue]

Here's a pretty amusing thread for you on naming kayaks.

I would love to help you ID those birds of prey. When I worked in Boston we used to watch a pair of peregrine falcons hanging out on the side of the building from one of the office windows, so they are definitely in the area. But I think they're only winter residents in the northeast? In the wild, peregrines are fast. At least when they're not sitting around on tree branches, which they do a whole lot around here. But I've seen them on the OR coast and the two things I always come away with when I find peregrines are "fast" and "swooping." Possibly you had a merlin there?

whatbird is great. I also like allaboutbirds.org, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's site.

[camwyn]

I probably should have noted that I saw the bird of prey back in the wintertime- early February, I believe. I caught sight of it briefly in a tree when I was coming up a hill on Deer Island. It was perched on one of the tree branches with its body almost horizontal. I remember slate grey/greyblue body feathers and a distinctly dark head, and a pale underside (possibly speckled- I didn't get a close look at most of it) with a sort of blush of reddish-brown feathers around the legs. The tail was not the tail of a redtail hawk. I've seen enough of those to know one on sight. It was a good-sized bird and it took off from the tree branch when I got close, and dove for open air on the other side of the hill.

[camwyn]

*checks out the naming thread* Ah, okay, I'd say the Inuit tradition takes precedence over any other tradition, so no name required. I'm good with that.