Mokbaai just around the corner

In May 2007 a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) has been swimming around in the Marsdiep near the isle of Texel. This approximately 15 meters long whale was first noticed seen from the Helderse zeedijk by the crew of a patrol boat of the Navy. The patrol boat could easily approach the animal within only a few meters. On May 11th, the animal was foraging at the entrance of the Mokbaai on Texel. The whale was an adult humpback whale. The animal appeared 2-3 times and then remained 5-6 minutes underwater, over and over again. The blow of the animal was clearly visible. It was the fifth observation of a humpback whale in Dutch waters since 2003. Source: NIOZ archive May 2007 http://www.nioz.nl/

Although I have been a bit feverish these last couple of days, I decided to get some fresh air and some exercise to recover. Staying in bed doesn’t help at all. The weather was cloudy and dull today, except for the last two hours before sunset. My first plan was to visit De Hors at the farthest end of the Mokbaai. The Mokbaai is the bay where the humpback whale was seen in the spring of 2007, clearly a location where you can come across surprises! Now that only the last two hours were available to me, the plan to go to De Hors was too ambitious. The weather looked a bit threatening now and again, with dark clouds taking over…

Dark clouds are taking over

Therefore, I decided to stay at the Mokbaai closest to 't Horntje. Low-tide was just starting. A large part of the Mokbaai is dry at low-tide, and the tide revealed its secrets. Wading birds foraged on the tidal marshes, structures in the plains of silt as a work of art stretched from where I was standing to the point where I couldn't see no more, the sun sketched lines of light across the bay, and clearly it brings out the writer in me…

Sunset at low-tide

Precious feeding grounds for wading birds

Deep within I was hungry for seeing the wading birds of the Mokbaai up-close. Unfortunately, wading birds only come in close reach at the beginning of high-tide, when they are forced to forage near the coast instead of on the wide tidal plates during low-tide. And I also didn't spot any humpback whales, although that chance would be one in a million! Despite my desires, I saw - further up the coast - groups of oystercatchers, a curlew, a bar-tailed godwit and ruddy turnstones actively putting their beaks in the mud to get to their food. I even saw a marsh harrier hovering above the dunes, while rabbits flushed in the undergrowth. Nature in all its sturdiness...

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." Henry David Thoreau in the book Walden (1854)

Structures on tidal flats