Daily Observations

O'Connell Bridge in the Fog

The promise of a nice day with calm winds and relatively warm temperatures lured me out on the water to take a little kayak trip. I stayed out for a little while, but the thickening of the fog kept me close to shore. While I was paddling, since visibility was limited anyway, I tried paddling with my eyes closed. After a minute or so, I had turned 90 degrees to the left, despite trying to orient by the sound of the waves against the breakwater. Clearly I need a little more practice at that. The easiest way to tell direction in the fog was by the sun, but I never did go far enough away from shore that I could not see it, so I didn’t need to use the sun for navigation.

Weather: There was fog in the morning when I headed for class, but winds were calm. The fog was lifting by 9am, but started settling back in around 10am. It thickened throughout the day. Part of the time I was kayaking, I could see Mt. Verstovia, though there was fog all around me. Even by the end, I could still see a little bit of blue sky directly above, so the fog layer was not too thick. A student told me that there was no fog out Green Lake Road when he and another student road out that way on bicycles.

Birds: It was a little difficult to see the birds through the fog, but I did see plenty of Long-tailed Ducks, Common Mergansers, scaups and gulls in the channel. There was also a loon, probably a Common Loon. Between Sage Beach and the bridge there were Common Mergansers and Barrow’s Goldeneyes. I also saw at least one pair of Harlequin Ducks.

As I made it back to Sage Beach, I saw a loon (possibly the same one I had seen previously in the channel) and a Marbled Murrelet off the Crescent Harbor Breakwater.

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