Another Snowy Owl Hunt-part 1

 Hi everyone. I hope your week is going well. 

This is a scheduled post as my husband and I are away trying our best to escape winter for a few days. Thank goodness.   According to my daughter who is dog sitting we are getting dumped on.  It might be hard to come home in a couple of days😜

Last week I went to Salisbury State Beach Reservation in northeast Massachusetts twice. Both times I went looking for snowy owls, but I never saw one. On my second trip I went with 2 girlfriends, and even though the lack of snowy owls was disappointing (but is hit or miss because they are wild owls), we had a nice walk and saw some other interesting wildlife.

You might remember there was still snow in the dunes in last Saturday's post, but by the time we took this trip (just 2 days after my first trip), the snow had disappeared.

There were still clam and mussel shells scattered all over the beach. 

The holes you see in some of the shells are made by predatory snails (often moon snails) that want to eat the animal inside the bivalve shells.

And I love this purple sand.

Isn’t  this purple colored sand beautiful?  Here's what I think causes it: Colored Beach Sand.

But we also find purple beaches in other areas, where the color purple comes from mixing a variety of sand grains with different colors. These include grains of pink almandine-pyrope garnet, white quartz, a mix of black minerals, including augite, ilmenite and hematite, and green epidote. All these particles together create the purple sand at the Plum Island Beach in the state of Massachusetts in the US.

Plum Island, Massachusetts (that is mentioned in this explanation I found) is quite near to Salisbury State Reservation where all these photos were taken.

And for those of you who love some rust, here's a couple of close ups of those metal pilings.

I love close ups of the  trees that have washed up onto the beach. The wood has such a cool texture.

And it wasn't a beautiful sunny day when we went. These clouds were the outer band of some that brought us about 6 inches of snow that night and into the next day.

But the grey skies certainly make the color of the orange triangular sign pop.

That's all for me today, but I do have some more photos from our beach walk that I'll share tomorrow in another scheduled post. 

Thanks for visiting.