Asa here. Since Chuck Billy brought up the topic of wildlife friends yesterday, today I’d like to share with you the new friends we made while on vacation. Near where we stayed was a little beach, that we shared with the local residents.

One day, after a morning of hiking, Chuck Billy and I were quietly napping on the beach, while Mom and Dad read. However, over the scent of the salt air, pine, and seaweed, I caught a different smell in the air. One that I recognize from home, but never sniffed at the beach before. It was a Momma Deer and her Daughter Doe! Unfortunately I startled them by raising my head so quickly, and they ran back into the woods before I could properly introduce myself. They did return later though, because Chuck Billy found their tracks on the beach, and before we returned home they paid a neighborly visit to the yard of where we were vacationing. This time I quietly watched from the sliding glass door, and didn’t disturb them. After all, this is their neighborhood, and we were just visitors.

We also kept our respectful distance from the shorebirds who call that beach home. Based on their coloration, and pack mentality, the majority of these birds were Sandpipers. But I do believe that larger one in the photo is a Piping Plover, despite tending to be a more solitary creature. These little friends reminded Mom of Celia Thaxter’s 1883 poem, “Sandpiper”:

“Across the lonely beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I,
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I….”

At the end of each day when we said goodnight to the beach, we were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Loon. They quietly floated along marveling at the sunset with us, and occasionally said their mournful cry. Which brings me to another one of Celia Thaxter’s poems, “Goodbye, Sweet Day” (1891):

“…Good-by, sweet day, good-by!
All thy rich gifts my grateful heart remembers,
The while I watch thy sunset’s smouldering embers
Die in the west beneath the twilight gray.
Good-by, sweet day!”

There were other friends we met on the beach during our visit, but Chuck Billy is insisting on sharing that story himself on some other day. You know how he gets when he thinks he’s made an important discovery.