3:00 snapshot #1408: Urban Nature Walk To Malibu Beach!

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Here we are on our way back from the following adventure:



On Sunday morning I led an Urban Nature Walk to Malibu Beach in Dorchester!

Maybe "led" is a little much. It was just me, my dad, and Ajay. And "Malibu Beach" is more confused and misleading than I even intended. Most of what you will see in these pictures is Savin Hill Beach. "Malibu Beach" seems to be a local joke that was somehow made more official through cartographical whimsy. My friend who grew up in the area described a section of Savin Hill Beach that he thought would be the part called Malibu Beach, but it didn't jibe with what was on the map posted in the kiosk. I think I believe my friend. Savin hill beach is in a little protected area, and is about 3/4 circular. One side of it faces east--this, my friend said, is Malibu Beach--the west coast of Dorchester. The map identified the beach on the opposite side of the protected area, the side across the highway, that actually faces the harbor, as Malibu Beach. Anyway. What did we find there?


Almost immediately we saw a great blue heron. It moved from place to place but we could see it almost the entire time.


I also found the place on the beach where it landed. These tracks were deeper than the ones around it, indicating the impact of landing.


Where the sand of the beach met the boardwalk there was a band of seaside goldenrod, a hardy, salt-tolerant native species.




The honeybees seem to like it!


Then we noticed a great egret standing on a rail over at the Dorchester Yacht Club.


It turned out there were two of them; Ajay carefully moved closer to get a shot of the other one.


Also along the waterline we found this wildflower. Ajay determined it was sea lavender Limonium carolinianum (not closely related to other lavenders).


Further up the beach, near the houses, was a group of trees unfamiliar to me. Ajay, who volunteers at the Arnold Arboretum, recognized these as Hackberry. (Celtis sp.) They had distinctive, warty bark.


I flipped some rocks to find some crabs.


And came across this fairly large (2-3 foot) fish carcass, well-picked over by predators and scavengers.


One section of the beach was full of this red pickleweed! I tasted some and it was extremely salty.



If you enjoyed this post you should really check out Ajay's blog post from the same day. He's a talented photographer and provided information beyond what is here.