Birds!

  With the Bay literally full of menhaden, the fishing is good...for everything.  Mark and I have been catching our share of fish for supper and have even been fortunate enough to catch extras to share with our elderly friends.  Most of these folks used to fish in their younger days but just are not steady enough to go now.  It is our habit to give more fish (all cleaned and bagged) than we keep.  We figure that sharing has multiplied our good catches each day.  Share the blessings and they come back ten fold.  

  Not only are we having good catches but the waterfowl are getting nice and fat.  The pelicans, cormorants and gulls have round bellies!  It is those raucous gulls that amuse us at times as they would rather steal a minnow than catch their own.  We really have to be careful when casting our lines or else the minnow will never reach the water.  More than once, a gull has plummeted from the sky just in time to snatch our bait.  Silly birds!  With the millions of menhaden pipping the surface of the water, it looks as if the birds could find their own meals.  Yet...let me toss over one dead bait and every seagull in the entire Bay area seems to come screaming "Its MINE!"  Time after time, they swoop down almost colliding with me, each other and the pier posts, yet, never once do they hit anything.  The screaming and swooping goes on for a good five minutes before one lucky bird actually dares to dive right next to the pier and scoop up the bait.  Then as that bird takes flight with its prize, all of the other birds give chase.  More oft than not, the lucky bird becomes equally unlucky as it will drop the minnow and the ruckus starts all over again.  

  Today's odd assortment of bird friends, included more migrating cormorants, a few ducks (they stayed far away from the pier), a pair of eagles, one osprey, dozens of pelicans and a mishmash of gulls.  The gulls were the most noticeable since they nearly bombarded me at all times.  Their loud calls, demands for food and constant dive-bombing made fishing a bit uncomfortable.  My time on the pier was cut short due to an infiltration of BIRDS!