Secret Beach Pictures

Hard to believe, but yesterday was one of the first days where the tide was low and there were birds to be found down on my secret beach, so named because it has a public entrance but is effectively hidden so you kind have to know about it!  It butts up to the Ft. Fisher beaches and for some reason is covered with sandstone and seaweed at low tide.  It is now almost unwalkable at high tide because Hurricane Irene this year washed away a lot of beach.  


These are one of my favorite beach birds -- the Ruddy Turnstones with their bright orange legs.  There were a lot of them on the beach.

There were a lot of the common Willest as well.  I keep hoping for a more interesting sandpiper!

All the Sanderlings, Ruddy Turnstones and Willets were in a feeding frenzy today.  

Of course all my Buffleheads were offshore in two rather large groupings.  I had hoped to get a better picture of the Black Scoters but they weren't there.  Instead there was one Surf Scoter but I couldn't get a good enough picture to post, only good enough to identify.  I think I have seen all the different varieties of Scoter now although I haven't seen the White Winged one down here, only in Rochester.  I think the Surf Scoter was the unidentified brown bird from the day before as well.

I am determined to get borders done on existing tops before I launch into a full scale attempt to design and finish the next Serendipity quilt.  This was my first attempt at borders for the first quilt.  The outside fabric was just too busy and didn't work although the color was good.  It was just too medium a value.

I finally decided on using the dark green that is in the quilt.  Luckily I think I have enough of it.  It is just a solid but helps to frame it.  I have just enough of the other two (the red and the pink) to make the skinny inside borders -- the red being a little wider.  Not only will I be using fabric I brought down, but I literally won't have any scraps left after doing these quilts.  The quilt police will probably get me for adding seams in my borders though.