Jamestown, RI- New Year's Eve

Beautiful winter day at Beavertail

I wrote this on New Year's Eve, but since I thought it would be nice to put pictures of my little buddy Amber online so her friends could see them, I skipped over this post for a couple  days.


I found out late Thursday that I would have New Year's Eve off from work. I did not have a plan. I looked at my list of winter daytrips that I have planned and really couldn't do any of them. For example, I can't do a snowshoe trip at Wachusett Reservoir when there is no snow, or a seal cruise because they only run on Saturdays.

So I quickly decided to take a run to Beavertail. The weather was turning out to be really nice after an overnight rain storm. By 8:30am the sky was bright blue and the air temperature was warming up ( the high temp only got up to about 43 degrees, but in the sun with little wind, it felt much warmer)

The conditions were calm at the state park. The water was almost glass, if you know anything about Beavertail, you know this almost never happens. I did not see a lot of birds. There were a bunch of harlequin ducks in the water, but little else. I saw a surprise catbird but that was about it.

I decided to explore Jamestown a little bit. Although I fish down there and bird often, it is always in the area from Fort Wetherhill to Beavertail.  My first stop was off of Frigate Road. I found a boat ramp for car toppers. I thought it might be a good place to try fluke fishing from the kayak since it is

Newport Bridge from Potters Cove

very close to the Jamestown Bridge.

I then went to the very northern tip of the island and found a public access area called Park Dock. There isn't much parking unless you are a resident, but at this time of year, no one cared that I parked and looked at the water for five minutes. The view looking north into the bay was nice.

I then hugged the eastern shoreline until I got to Potters Cove. I fish this little beach regularly. Obviously, there weren't any stripers today in the middle of winter, but there was a huge tanker offshore in the passage.

One place that I drive by all the time that I never stopped at is the windmill. Today I finally stopped. The windmill was built in 1787. After reading the signs, I learned that it was built to power a grinding mill. The mill ground corn into corn meal. It was used for many years. The windmill is now owned by the Jamestown Historical Society, they keep up the maintenance on it.

I went back to Beavertail. It was still early and I did not want to go home. Secondly, I thought I might see something I missed earlier. As I was about to turn around the light, I saw a guy with a huge camera facing the sky. Almost directly above him only ten feet in the air a red tailed hawk was hovering. It was not moving or flapping its wings. It was staying completely still like it was floating in a picture. It stayed this was for a couple of minutes. The guy just kept snapping away. Finally the big hawk dove into the underbrush. It flew out a few seconds later with a mouse in its talons.

It flew to the top of a nearby phone pole and ate the mouse. After it ate, it flew to the chimney of
Beavertail Light and waited. Again it flew down to hover. This time, only for a minute. Then it repeated its dive into the brush and came out with another mouse. It went back to its telephone pole and ate. It then flew back to the Lighthouse. It sat for about ten minutes before it flew west across the bay.

I only got one good photo of it hovering. The guy that was below it must have gotten fifty award winning shots. Imagine standing under a basketball hoop with your camera pointed at it. Then imagine that hoop as a two foot tall bird with a six foot wingspan looking right at you! That is what that guys camera was focused on!

After the hawk left, I checked out a few more spots, but didn't see much else. No worries though, it was a great day.

Incredible