A pretty busy weekend

I did all sorts of fun things on my two days off this week. I'm going to write about them here in case they give anyone inspiration to do any of these things. Photos from each thing below text.

Trustom Pond

   Friday morning I met up with my friend Sue. The plan was to go to the Charlestown Breachway and look for shorebirds. However, low tide wasn't until noon so we went to Trustom Pond first. We didn't see a lot of  birds other than Yellow Rumps. We did see some cool snails and a beautiful Leaf Hopper insect

Look at the colors on the Red Banded Leafhopper
The snail is a White Lipped Snail. 

Bullfrog

Grove Snail

Charlestown Breachway 

We kayaked to the mudflats. There were very few birds on the mudflats however, before we left, Sue spotted the continuing Hudsonian Godwit across the channel. We watched it feed for half an hour and got some fantastic photo upgrades. I had only seen about four Hudsonian Godwits in my life and they were always far away. 

Hudsonian Godwit

Sadly, Sue and I found this dead skate

Newport Ghost Tour

I had to be home early so I could meet Laurie. We had reservations for the Newport Ghost Tour. This is not like a Haunted House or Corn Maze. A guide dressed in 1800's attire goes to different parts of town and tells you stories about ghosts that haunt the buildings or graveyards. The tour is very historic. Our guide, Brian, knows all of Newport's history. We went to the oldest tavern in America, a church where Washington attended services, and the site where much of the movie Amistad was filmed. Even if you are like me and don't believe in ghosts, it's worth the time because of the history, and the stories are good. The cost is $20/adult. The tour left at 8 pm from the Marriot near the harbor. It was supposed to last until 9:30, but Brian talked until almost ten o'clock. Well worth the money.

This is a photo of an old fire house

Above I cropped it to the left window. Do you see the
ghost of a man looking down on us?

  Cape Ann Whale Watch

    We got home in time to watch the Sox lose Game one to the Astros. However we had to get up early because we had reservations for a whale watch out of Cape Ann (the whale watch is in Gloucester, MA). The trip was scheduled for 8:30 am. They are running whale watches until Halloween. The Captain took us out to Jeffreys Ledge. The trip lasted 3.5 hours. We were back in port about 11:30. The cost is $50 but you can get tickets significantly cheaper on Groupon. 

   Our trip was not spectacular compared to others I've been on.  They can't all be great. Today we saw one Humpback Whale. It was deep feeding so it came up every five to ten minutes to breathe then would dive again. We spent about an hour seeing the whale about five times for a minute before it would arch its back and dive again. There were a lot of Northern Gannets around but other than gulls, no other pelagic birds like shearwaters.

Northern Gannet

After the whale watch we came home and made sausage, peppers, and onions in a Slow Cooker and enjoyed them while watching the Sox go up 8-0 in the second inning. A great weekend to sat the least.