An outing, with fishies
Aug. 11th, 2011 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgWent with Husband for the second (and hopefully last) time to the local Video Ezy closing down sale and acquired *cough* a few more titles. List to be posted separately. Then it was down to Hillary's boat harbour again for coffee, solar radiation, sculpture, and wildlife.
I think I missed writing up our last visit to Hillary's where I was deeply disappointed by my mocha from San Churro's - it tasted like neither coffee nor chocolate. This time out of a lack of imagination we got our coffee to go from Dome. Despite the evil giant corporate overtones it was very good.
We took our cups out onto the bridge over the harbour and drank in the sunshine while looking at the calm waters, occasional excitable seagull, and thinly deployed tourists. We then made our way to the far end to visit the dolphin statue, which for $2 will rotate for you.
That's what the sign says: THESE DOLPHINS WILL ROTATE FOR YOU. Promises promises. Last time we were there we didn't have any change, but this time we came prepared and determined to succeed.
In went the money. Nothing happened. This was not particularly surprising, but we were happy to sacrifice the money as a donation and sit on the wall nearby anyway. And then, almost imperceptibly, the statue slithered (my best guess at the opposite of "sprung") into life and began to turn. We settled in to watch the show. Around it went with, it must be said, a disappointing absence of creaky mechanical noises. And then it stopped. Oh yes, THESE DOLPHINS WILL ROTATE FOR YOU all right, but just the once.
Once.
Then it was back across the footbridge to head home, and we caught a flash of dorsal fin - a real dolphin was in the harbour! It dashed about hunting perhaps mullet (more likely tailor it seems) in the shallow water (it should have tried Saturday night at the nearby Breakwater Tavern), and managed to catch two or three as we watched before heading back out to sea. Sadly the little compact camera is not the fastest off the block and this is the best action shot we could get:
It's either a dolphin or the Loch Ness Monster.
But wait! There's more! It looks like themullet(?) MaybeTailor were in the harbour hunting whiting whitebait, as we saw a whole school of them tightly spinning around a bait ball. Every few seconds one would breach the surface with a silvery flash and a lightning splash. Occasionally a small group of a dozen or so whitebait managed to escape and sought the safety of the pilings.
The water wasn't quite that colour but I had to mess with the brightness and contrast to make sure the fish were visible. I'm not sure if anything was hunting the dolphin, but we do do a decent great white shark around here. The 1-2" whitebait looked quite capable of taking out the odd pasty English tourist (Insert chorus of "The Circle of Life").
I had to drag myself away from the spectacle. Husband had sensibly found a spot to sit and wait for me; he knows what happens to me in the presence of wildlife. It's not fast.
On the way back to the car we passed a souvenir sheepskin place, and on a hunch I checked to see if they had any wool booties (too thick for socks, too insubstantial for slippers, but perfect as bedsocks for the icy-footed). My much-beloved and possibly teenaged pair had been on the verge of turning into bootie atoms for a long time now, but I've been unable to find replacements. These were for sale at better than internet rates, so I pounced.
An excellent outing. Here, have a bonuscomet cloud:
P.S. And all this after 1 1/2 hours of solid (chargeable!) work first thing in the morning :-)
I think I missed writing up our last visit to Hillary's where I was deeply disappointed by my mocha from San Churro's - it tasted like neither coffee nor chocolate. This time out of a lack of imagination we got our coffee to go from Dome. Despite the evil giant corporate overtones it was very good.
We took our cups out onto the bridge over the harbour and drank in the sunshine while looking at the calm waters, occasional excitable seagull, and thinly deployed tourists. We then made our way to the far end to visit the dolphin statue, which for $2 will rotate for you.
That's what the sign says: THESE DOLPHINS WILL ROTATE FOR YOU. Promises promises. Last time we were there we didn't have any change, but this time we came prepared and determined to succeed.
In went the money. Nothing happened. This was not particularly surprising, but we were happy to sacrifice the money as a donation and sit on the wall nearby anyway. And then, almost imperceptibly, the statue slithered (my best guess at the opposite of "sprung") into life and began to turn. We settled in to watch the show. Around it went with, it must be said, a disappointing absence of creaky mechanical noises. And then it stopped. Oh yes, THESE DOLPHINS WILL ROTATE FOR YOU all right, but just the once.
Once.
Then it was back across the footbridge to head home, and we caught a flash of dorsal fin - a real dolphin was in the harbour! It dashed about hunting perhaps mullet (more likely tailor it seems) in the shallow water (it should have tried Saturday night at the nearby Breakwater Tavern), and managed to catch two or three as we watched before heading back out to sea. Sadly the little compact camera is not the fastest off the block and this is the best action shot we could get:
It's either a dolphin or the Loch Ness Monster.
But wait! There's more! It looks like the
The water wasn't quite that colour but I had to mess with the brightness and contrast to make sure the fish were visible. I'm not sure if anything was hunting the dolphin, but we do do a decent great white shark around here. The 1-2" whitebait looked quite capable of taking out the odd pasty English tourist (Insert chorus of "The Circle of Life").
I had to drag myself away from the spectacle. Husband had sensibly found a spot to sit and wait for me; he knows what happens to me in the presence of wildlife. It's not fast.
On the way back to the car we passed a souvenir sheepskin place, and on a hunch I checked to see if they had any wool booties (too thick for socks, too insubstantial for slippers, but perfect as bedsocks for the icy-footed). My much-beloved and possibly teenaged pair had been on the verge of turning into bootie atoms for a long time now, but I've been unable to find replacements. These were for sale at better than internet rates, so I pounced.
An excellent outing. Here, have a bonus
P.S. And all this after 1 1/2 hours of solid (chargeable!) work first thing in the morning :-)
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