3.0 Mile Walk at the John Chafee Nature Preserve
Friday, March 21, 2014
I checked the tide tables and it turned out that low tide (the best time to see the seals at Rome Point) is late afternoon/early evening... so I decided to try going there this afternoon, hoping a weekday would have the fewest number of people at the Point. So I was a bit disappointed when I pulled into the parking area and found about a dozen cars there - I figured the Point would be pretty crowded. Incredibly, I only saw four other people during the walk down there, and the beach was empty when I got there (and stayed that way for the 45 minutes that I was there.)
Quite a few seals out on the rocks, it was a blast watching them and shooting pictures and video. They always look like they're enjoying themselves relaxing on the rocks in the sunshine.
The gulls are also often entertaining, and today was no exception. One gull has apparently been hanging out with the terns... he repeatedly hovered and plunged straight down into the water, until he finally came up with something in his beak. A while later another one did a pretty good diving duck imitation, repeatedly ducking underwater until he finally came up with a shellfish - which he took up into the air and dropped on the rocks, so that he could enjoy an evening feast.
The south bay had a group of bufflehead and a group of red-breasted mergansers swimming around, and apparently spring is in the air for them... the males were chasing each other away and then doing all sorts of neat courtship displays for the females. Pretty cool to see.
The north side of the preserve borders Bissel Cove... on the walk out, all I saw there were gulls, gulls, and more gulls, but on the way back a raft of brants had come on (they look a lot like smaller, oddly colored Canada geese) and there was a group of black ducks there as well. I did pass a few more people on the walk out, so maybe I picked a good time to head out.
This was definitely a great way to start my trip to RI and CT!
JMH
