June, 2022
On my first morning here, it was the beach that circled Birch Bay that called to me. I’d not been to Birch Bay before, even though I have lived in Washington State for most of my life. As a boater, I’ve been to a whole heck of a lot of salt water beaches up and down Puget Sound and in the San Juan Islands in Washington State and never found one I didn’t like. 🙂 I figured I would like the Birch Bay beach too. I sure did.
In the image below, Birch Bay State Park (where I was camped) is the RED DOT, along with a RED LINE which is the road that led directly out of the campground and right onto the road that runs right along the beach. The PURPLE LINE is the border between Canada and the USA.
It was so thoughtful of the folks who designed this place to include lots of parking along that beach road. I was here in early June (not many kids out of school yet so not much camping going on, and the weather was cool-ish, and I was here mid-week). I had the place to myself!
I parked the truck and simply walked across the road and found an easy, short trail down onto the beach. The tide was out, I loved that … more exploration opportunities.
Photo below, looking to the left along the beach, a jam-packed housing area down there on that outcrop of land. [I’ll drive out there and show you some of the houses … next blog post, I think.]
Looking to the right (below) … Birch Bay. There are homes along the edge of the bay in the far distance, but down here where the Birch Bay State Park is there were no homes, and almost no visitors except for me.
Well, there was this one fellow out there on the edge of the water (below) who came ashore for a second or two with his paddle board, then he was back out on the water and paddled further up, to the right, to some other part of the beach.
Oh, but look! In the lower right corner of the photo below. Look who was smart enough to jump in the truck at the campsite, then jump out of the truck here, and scurry across the road. Little Towhee! 🙂
Little Towhee is always up for an adventure, especially on a beach where things smell interesting and where there’s lots of cool stuff to see that she never sees at home.
Ok, come on Little Towhee, let’s get out on that beach!
Something smelly already. That’s a clam shell, an old clam shell. There are millions of those on the beaches of Washington. Humans take the clams for eating and leave the shells behind, so do seagulls, and river otters, and herons, and eagles.
Out on the rocky part of the beach now, Little Towhee finds two more different kinds of clam shells, also without their former inhabitants.
The shell on the left is likely a Cockle Clam. The shell on the right is likely a Butter Clam (with a bunch of barnacles attached to the shell).
Oh gosh, here are more good things to sniff. This little bird finds the best stuff.
On the left is a white cylindrical, circular shell (broken) … I don’t know what it is, tho I see lots of them. It’s not a bivalve. Is it a whelk? What is it? On the right is a piece of a shell of a large Red Rock Crab.
Oh, look, Little Towhee found almost a whole Red Rock Crab and it’s real stinky! 🙂
Almost a whole one. This one was missing its claws (the claws have lots of meat in them so predators chomp them off quickly), and this crab shell was quite faded because it has evidently been on the beach in the sun for quite some time. It was only about 3″ from tip to tip so it was a small one. Again, when we turned this crab shell over, there was nothing inside the shell. Besides the human and marine life mentioned above who eat clams (and crabs), it’s also true that starfish (Sea Stars) eat sea creatures like crabs and clams and such. Your marine neighbors are not always very friendly to each other!
I spent a couple of hours on just this one part of the beach, walking on the sand or out on the rocks. I don’t usually go way out to the green seaweed when the tide is out since it’s slippery out there. The sky was blue, there was no wind, the sun was just warm enough. Little Towhee and I were the only people on the beach. There is a more popular (and populated) portion of this public beach further up the road a bit, but Little Towhee and I were perfectly happy right here.
One last look out over the salt water of Birch Bay (for today anyway, we’ll be back later in the week) and then it was time to head back to the campsite for lunch.