Our river is the White Oak which is well over a mile wide near us.  It is home to lots of fish, otherwise known as heron food.  In fact the small gut of water behind our home often is a boiling sea of finger mullet which I suspect is one of the herons' favorite foods.

We have a number of white herons and at least two great blue herons, but we only have one green heron as far as I can tell.  My green heron is one of the more cooperative herons in that he does not mind being photographed.

The blue herons can smell a camera and start flying as soon as you try to snap a picture.  The white herons are clever because they give you only their narrowest and least interesting profile.

That leaves me with the green heron who seem to be willing to even show me his long neck.

This is a nice series of green heron photos that I took one morning.

It has been a while since I got some good blue heron shots, and I had to find a more cooperative blue heron down the river near Swansboro.  These are my blue heron shots that I got that day.

I have managed plenty of white heron shots.  They seem to be around a lot which is why I guess we live on White Heron Lane.

While I often think of the inlet being my runway to the White Oak, the ICW, and Bogue Inlet maybe it is just a heron landing strip.

If you want a very good look at my favorite green heron, click on the thumbnail picture in the post.

Finger Mullet on Dock

Assuming the chemical used for weed kill are not so bad and that might be a big assumption, going to no till cultivation is a good way to stop erosion on slightly sloping land.  Stopping erosion means preventing topsoil from migration from land to river.

Our subdivision, Bluewater Cove, has been around less than ten years.  I know for a fact that the water behind and near my home was once nothing more than a mud filled swamp.  I once knew the volume of silt that was removed from the channels.  It was impressive.

Still it would have done no good without a proper drainage plan to slow future accumulations of silt.  Fortunately for us that was done and the area behind our home has gone from mud flats to nursery.

One throw with my cast net yielded all those finger mullet on my dock.  Our neighbors are white, blue, and green herons among other birds that love to wade the waters.

I am even proud of the bags of styrofoam pellets that are buried behind our home to filter the driveway stormwater that goes into the water behind the house.  I can see it as it enters the water.  It is crystal clear just like much of the water already here on the Crystal Coast.

Our area is truly all about the water, I feel good about living in a subdivision where keep silt and animal waste out of the water is a big priority.  We still have a ways to go on figuring out how to take care of our centipede grass without chemicals and how to control fireants, but we are making progress.

It is nice to know even new construction does not hurt our waters.  We would not want it any other way.

Morning spider web

Recently I have noticed an interesting tendency among people looking to buy property.  They want a santized out doors or at least one which has no downside.

I can only think this comes from people who have spent very little time outside their living rooms.

Having lived in places as diverse as Cape Carteret, NC and Halifax, Nova Scotia, I can tell you that you take what you get with the outside world.  It is always changing, but you cannot eliminate all the bugs or take the hot days out of summer.

I spent a fair amount of my spare time when we lived in Roanoke, Va battling poison ivy along a trail that I kept up in the woods on the mountain behind our home.  It almost became a crusade, but I kept the poison ivy at bay as long as I patrolled the trail regularly.  I have not be on the trail in a few years so I am certain that it is sneaking back.

My efforts no more eliminated poison ivy from the area than one can eliminate thunderstorms from summer.

Yet I believe we have a significant number of people among us who would sanitize the outside world if they could.

My legs are a testiment to the work that I have done outside in the south.  There are scratches, bites, and old wounds galore.  I always figured what did not kill me made me stronger.

I am not sure what part the little spiders that make nests in my centipede grass play in the grand scheme of things, but I certainly do not mind sharing my front yard with them.  Likely if they tried to invade my house, I would launch an attack, but right now that are just part of that outside world which I enjoy.

I chose to live outside and hope that the battles I pick with mother nature are ones that need to be fought even if only for a time.

I know some like the one against the blackflies in Canada are unwinnable.  I am happy to live in a spot on the coast where by some quirk of nature we do not have to fight mosquitoes.

I hope that those who want to enjoy the warmth of southern winter without the heat of a southern summer realize that the only way to do that is to move to New England for the summer.

If you want the south without its bugs and snakes, you might want to consider what you are asking and try to find a nice city to live in for now until you figure out your relationship with mother nature.

I for one will rather take the benefits like a perfect beach day or a day on the water with whatever challenges there are rather than give up the great times.

I am proud that a pollution study in our area found that we can improve the health of the White Oak by slowing the water flow into the river after storms.  That is not a major reordering of our world.

We are lucky to have no city to really pollute the river.  I love seeing the shrimp and mullet compete for space in our inlet.  At one time the inlet was filled with mud and decaying vegetation.  Today it is swarming with life.

With help from millions of oysters, we already have very clean water, and we can make it cleaner.

It would be nice to have a fish management plan to go along with the plan to improve the water.

I think if there were fewer gill nets, we might see a resurgence of fishing.

I wounder if the oysters or crabs will eventually own the river?  They are both survivors.

More information on NC's CRystal Coat can be found at the Crystal Coast Living Blog.

Harkers Island Ibis

We live in a small subdivision, Bluewater Cove, on the White Oak River. (Area map) Raymond's Gut a part of the White Oak comes up behind our home.  Most evening I can actually hear the fish jumping.  As the water warms, they get very active.  This past Saturday night, it seemed as if they were throwing a party in the Gut.

Ten years ago the waterway behind my home was filled with silt from poor farming practices in the area.  Now after it was cleaned up during the development of our subdivision, it is an amazing marine nursery.  Depending on the time of year, it is filled with mullet, shrimp, or other bait fish.  With the bait fish some bigger fish feeding on the small ones.

With all the pollution in the world, it is nice to live near water that has gotten better and is now positively impacting our marine envirnoment.  Of course we have a lot of oysters which are great at filtering water.  Then there are the blue crabs which will clean anything that falls into the water.

I am pleased to live in an area that is blessed with natural beauty and lots of wildlife.  We had a really neat visit to the Core Sound Museum up on Harker's Island recently.  I wrote it up on our Crystal Coast living blog.

If you want to have a look at a neat white Ibis rookery, check out this slide show.

We have a lot of neat places in Carteret County for sale if you are interested in finding a home in the midst of natural beauty.  Check out our listings on the Crystal Coast Electronic Village.

Oysters in Raymond's Gut

Last summer on August 2 we visited an open house at the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort.  There we were shown a bucket of murky water and another of clear water which contained oysters.  For a demonstration they had dipped two buckets of water and placed oysters in one.

At 50 gallons of water per day per oyster, it did not take them long to clear up the water.  We live on the White Oak River which at time appears to be one giant oyster reef at least from the perspective of someone piloting a boat down the river to the Intracoastal Waterway.

I snapped the shot of the oysters in this post while walking on the boardwalk around our clubhouse in Bluewater Cove.  We have had very little precipitation in the last couple of months so the river is absolutely clear except for the brown tint that it always has.

We were out on the river not long ago and noticed a boat working one of the channels.  It turns out that the boat was a deep water clam rig.  One thing that you can be certain of is that if they have opened the river for clams or oysters, the water has tested very clean.  They are very careful about shellfish.

Some folks don't like the brown tint of the White Oak.  It is actually called a blackwater river.  In spite of that the water often looks very blue as it does in this slide show that I created after a recent run on the river.

I don't mind the color of the water.  I actually enjoy the variety of colors that our local waters mirror.  I especially like the wonder blue-green colors that we often see when the light is just right and the sky is very blue.  A good example would be these slides from last summer.

I am glad we have oysters around.  I love to eat them, I am proud our waters are pure enough that the oysters do well here and can be eaten most of the time.  We have a tremendous variety of marine life in the area.  The slides taken when we visited the Duke Marine lab have pictures of what hides in our waters along with some random ones taken that day.

I also did slides from our recent visit to the NC Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores. There are plenty of marine neighbors there.

Somehow when your back steps lead to the water, you feel the need to get to know your neighbors.  It happens to be one of my favorite preoccupations.

Raymond's Gut open water

The morning after the big storm I was doing my normal morning survey of our homestead when I noticed a strange area of open water.

It looked like a skiff had started down Raymond's Gut towards our home.  However the straight edges made me suspicious. I really doubted that you could back a skiff up without breaking more ice.

I walked over to our clubhouse where I could see the water leading to the White Oak River.  It was pretty obvious that no boat had come in from the river.

I sent the picture to one of my college roommates who suggested that I should check on my crop circles.  On closer examination I could see splash patterns that looked remarkably like water that would fly out onto the ice if ducks were using this as a runway.

It just so happened that I had noticed some Mergansers in the water behind the house before the snow.  I started wondering if their swimming had kept the water open.

This afternoon after the ice had mostly melted, I saw the Mergansers swimming in the same area.

I am pretty sure they are responsible for the open water.

I guess we all had to make some adjustments since this is the first snow in six years for the Crystal Coast.

We have also had more than our fair share of gloomy weather.  That has kept me on the lookout for great sunsets and scenery to brighten the winter.

With the economy in a tailspin and the weather not giving us those warm fall days that we had last year, the pressure has been building to find some relief.

After a holiday weekend in Roanoke, VA where we even saw snow on some of the roofs, I felt the need to get out to the beach.

We managed a trip up Emerald Isle on Tuesday of this week and I shot some video which I posed on YouTube.  It was a simple video designed to highlight the peace and quiet of a winter beach. If you watch it, try the high qualtity version if you have the bandwidth.

Going over to the beach is great, and with clear winter skies we have been treated to a color show for the last few weeks when the clouds have not interrupted the sunset.  On Thursday of this week, I snapped these photos at the Croatan Trails access point in Cedar Point.

They were a good dose of color to cheer up my winter spirits.

Still I can hardly waite for spring.

Last of fall

Actually I really do miss fall. It seems like the heat from summer over stayed its welcome well into September. It took much of October for the waters to begin to cool.

Then the winds and the rains started playing havoc with planned fishing trips. Everytime we turned around, there was a front coming through the area.

Fortunately we just started fishing closer to home. We could watch the fronts come through, and if there any serious storms or winds, we could be back at the dock in five minutes.

While that helped, it certainly did not give us a lot of time for fishing. Then this cold weather showed up. First it dropped to the low sixties, and for the last couple of days the temperatures have struggled to get out of the forties.

I am no fair weather fisherman, but I would like to keep from freezing my rear to the seats on the boat.

Actually I have gone from suspecting that this is winter to confirming that this has to be winter.

In less than a month I have gone from being very optimistic about November fishing to becoming resigned that this is not going to be the fall season that I had hoped.

We caught some nice fish this fall, it just wasn't the great season I wanted it to be.

The good news is that we might still get in some good days, and if we don't, there is always next year.

Sometimes we go through a few rainy days. Dampness along the coast seems to take its toll on those of us living here. Most of us came here for the blue skies and warm days not rain.

While our heat pumps have run some during the last few days, we have not used our gas logs in a few weeks.

The gas logs are one of the first things we turn to in order to drive out the dampness when things head downhill.

Next we resort to warm meals, and we switch to blue jeans instead of shorts. Then we throw on a sweatshirt, and we are winter ready.

One of our favorite meals during cold spells is homemade clam chowder.

It usually warms me up quickly. It is like one of those soup commercials when you warm from the inside out.

From watching clouds and the weather reports, it ls seems that we are in for a weather change. We are expected to get rain tonight and tomorrow. We could get up to two inches.

Then we get a break and some more rain on Friday.

I would like to hope we get some nice warm rain, but we are already about ten degrees too cool for that.

With temperatures approaching seventy we are not going to suffer too much. However, it looks like after the rain clears out that our high temperatures will only be in the fifties.

I guess I should go buy some cans of clams. For the latest on coastal North Carolina, visit my coastal paradise website.