A short weekend trip to the Delaware seashores. Rehoboth Beach is highly commercialized, and at the peak of the season it is jammed to the brim with people. On the boardwalk and on the beach, laughing gulls are everywhere. Ignorant tourists feed them with junk food, including fries. The gulls are emboldened by these free handouts and sometimes would wait at people’s feet for a few scraps. This cannot be good for them. But, alas, they are still magnificent animals.
At Cape Henlopen State Park, the situation is not as crazy and this is where we had the best of our time. The authorities closed the tip of the cape for the shorebirds’ breeding season — I was disappointed that I could not go to the tip, but this is a good thing for the birds. Ghost crabs abound on the beach, and a Ruddy Turnstone came up to me to pose for a picture.
The highlight came when we were sunbathing on the beach — a pod of dolphins (most certainly Atlantic Bottlenose) came to feed near shore. They proved to be hard to photograph as they rose to breath ever so fleetingly, and by the time you spot one it is almost already gone. But I managed to get a few glimpses:
Crowded on the beach or not, the ocean goes on with its own rhythms, as does the moon. The (nearly) full moon rising over the Atlantic is still a magnificent sight to behold.
