Images: Barnegat Light

Some more pics that might've been included in yesterday's post...

Beth and her friend Kathy traveled all the way from Pa. and had HAD ENOUGH by the time we met in the parking lot at midday. While the weather was beautiful... usually I think of Barnegat Light as the coldest place on earth... the brisk wind had brought out the apples on sweet Beth's cheeks.

:-)

This would, I think, make a nice quiz photo for those, like me, who are terror-stricken by shorebirds. At least in wintertime, the possibilities are somewhat limited.

Sleepy dunlin (I think... though I was at first convinced they were purple sandpipers), an orange-legged ruddy turnstone, and a sweet spotty-flanked black-belly plover.

(Take all those ID's with a grain of salt, of course.)

I love how tame shorebirds can be in winter and am amazed with how they find comfort together on these wind-swept jetties.

Harlequins... what sweet little sea ducks!

They weren't close in to the lighthouse this time, like they usually are...

Instead they were feeding way out at the end of the jetty, with a happy group of photographers closeby.

(I was a wimp and walked along the sand, instead of on those treacherous rocks.)

Oldsquaw (long-tailed ducks) are a favorite... for their pink-tipped bills and their calls... nothing says winter to me like that sound echoing in the wind.

The day was ended near Manahawkin with hopes for short-eared owls hunting like butterflies over the marsh at dusk.

There were none, but that matters little, really. For all the frigid sunsets I've lingered in to spot one with no success... the couple times I have seen them in the low-slanted light of a winter afternoon serve my memory well enough that the hope of them keeps me coming back to wait, just in case.