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| A multitude of birds were working the back of the bar during the morning on January 23rd across the street from my house. |
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| Was it "junk in the water" or was it fish? By the way the birds were acting it looked like they were working on sand eels. Wouldn't be surprised since a few days of east wind may have warmed the water. |
Of course the images I saw were real, the more interesting thing is what did they represent. For about fifteen minutes on Monday morning I watched gulls- not terns- going nuts on the back of the bar as far as I could see up and down the beach. They were hovering, dipping, doing all the things they normally do when they are having fun feeding on a school of bait below.
Think of it like this. When I was at work today hiking around on some islands in the bay, I asked my coworker, "Glenn, look over there [pointing to the sun shimmering off the bay]. Doesn't it look warm? "It is warm," was his reply. "Right," I said, "but doesn't it look warm too?" "Yeah. It looks like the Gulf of Mexico." The high today was almost 60F, and the warm sky and sun dancing on the water did indeed look like what I'd picture the Gulf of Mexico to look like.
In other words, if there were bass feeding on sand eels yesterday morning over there across the street, on January 22nd, it wouldn't surprise me this year. It kind of gets cold for a little bit, but it doesn't hold. Half the days this month had a high of 50F or better. To put things in persepctive, the average high should be around 38F, which means a high of 26F is just as normal as a high as 50F, yet we had only one day of 26F and thirteen with 50F or more so far.
I was tempted to call Rick and tell him . . . but I just didn't feel right calling someone at 07:00 in the morning during the final third of January to tell them birds are working. It's not the calling someone at 07:00 that is wrong, it's the part that it's supposed to be the most brutal cold part of the winter right now, and it's not. At least it feels good though, so I will take it and be comfortable walking my dog.
