View allAll Photos Tagged shellfish
I think I'll pass on the jellied eels!
Taken with my Fujifilm X-T30 II camera and a XF18-55mm lens on the classic chrome setting.
Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
A Green Heron with a shellfish meal, which was soon to disappear without ceremony down its ample gullet.
Costa Rica 2017
This Variable Oystercatcher suddenly thrust its long beak into the sand, and... hey presto: upon puling its beak out, it was holding a shellfish (probably a pipi)...!
The bird then thrust its beak between the two halves of the shell and enjoyed a very tasty morsel...!
That's the first time I've ever seen an Oystercatcher prying open a shellfish...!
New Zealand Birds On Line (nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/variable-oystercatcher) confirms that these birds "...favour bivalve molluscs (e.g. mussels, tuatua, cockles) when these are available. These are opened either by pushing the tip of the bill between shells and twisting, or by hammering."
Note that there is no mention of the birds eating oysters...!!!
Thanks so much for the very kind and encouraging comments beneath this photo...! Your support is very greatly appreciated.
This is one of two known surviving passenger cars out of a total of 12 that were used on the Ilwaco Railroad & Navigation Company (IR&N) line on the Long Beach Peninsula in Southwest Washington from 1889 to 1930.
The other car, the Nahcotta, is safely in the care of the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in downtown Ilwaco, where it is slowly and carefully being restored.
Oddly, I wasn't able to find information about this coach. If you're a true railroad buff, click here for the Wikipedia article that includes a list of rolling stock: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilwaco_Railway_and_Navigation_Compa...
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Here's a good overview of the railroad's history:
On July 19, 1888, the Ilwaco Steam Navigation Company's railroad makes its first run from Ilwaco to Long Beach. In 1889 tracks will be laid to Nahcotta, completing the line.
The railroad, soon to be called the Ilwaco Railroad and Steam Navigation Company but unofficially known as the Clamshell Railroad, will serve tourists, residents, and Willapa Bay shellfish growers, farmers, and loggers for 42 years.
Steamers and Stages
For nearly 30 years before the railroad began operations, white Americans followed an existing Indian trail to move people and products between Ilwaco, on the Columbia River, and Oysterville, on the Willapa Bay side of the Long Beach Peninsula.
Steamers brought logs, lumber, and passengers from the far side of the bay to Oysterville.
Scows carried oysters from Willapa Bay to the docks. The hard-packed wet sand on the ocean side of the peninsula provided an easy overland route at low tide.
A short passage through the woods at the north side of Cape Disappointment took travelers and goods to Ilwaco to meet steamers bound for Astoria, Portland, and other river and coastal towns.
After 1870 a regular stage line, operated by Jonathan Stout (1820-1890) ran between Ilwaco and Oysterville, then the Pacific County seat.
In 1872 Lewis Loomis (1831-1913) opened hotels where Seaview is today (2011) and at Nahcotta, south of Oysterville, to serve travelers and tourists coming to the peninsula for vacations.
Nahcotta became the preferred landing for steamers because the navigable channel along the western side of Willapa Bay came closest to the shore at that point.
Loomis joined with Astoria ship captain J. H. D. Gray (b. 1839), Portland transportation company owner Jacob Kramm (1832-1912), and Oysterville farmer John R. Goulter (1840-1921) to form the Ilwaco Navigation Company.
Their steamship, General Canby, ferried passengers and freight between Ilwaco and Astoria.
Another steam line connected Portland and Astoria. In the 1880s, with demand rising, the T.J. Potter and the Ocean Wave offered service directly between Portland and Ilwaco.
Loomis took over the stage route from Stout and won the contract for carrying mail between Astoria and Olympia.
He used Ilwaco Navigation Company steamers to carry the mail across the Columbia, then the stage to take it to Nahcotta. The mail then traveled via steamer across Willapa Bay, overland again to Grays Harbor, by boat across the bay, then up the Chehalis and Black rivers, ending with a short portage to Olympia on Puget Sound.
The Coming of the Railroad
During the 1880s and 1890s, railroad lines began to extend toward the coast from inland Washington and Oregon.
The Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in Grays Harbor in 1892, then Willapa Bay (at South Bend) in 1893.
In Oregon the Astoria and South Coast Railroad planned a coastwise line south from Astoria. These railroads threatened the Ilwaco Navigation Company's control of passenger and freight service in the area.
To remain competitive, the Ilwaco Navigation Company decided to build a rail line from its docks at Ilwaco to the landing at Nahcotta.
On July 19, 1888, the first five miles opened, stretching from Ilwaco to Henry and Nancy Tinker's hotel at Tinkerville, which was to be renamed Long Beach a month later.
Ilwaco and Tinkerville held banquets at each end of the line and flatcars outfitted with benches and canopies ferried people along the new route.
Land values promptly skyrocketed, from about $8 per acre to about $200 per acre in just a few months.
The town grew exponentially, from just 100 cottages in 1892 to almost 400 in 1894.
In August 1888 the transportation company changed its name to the Ilwaco Railroad and Steam Navigation Company and the following year completed its route to Nahcotta.
The railroad benefited from the lack of roads on the peninsula and around Willapa Bay.
Almost all people and goods traveled through Nahcotta and Ilwaco to get to other towns and markets, and the railroad offered the most efficient transportation.
Waiting for Tides, Stopping for Bears
Passengers at the time may have scoffed at the modifier "efficient."
The tide at Ilwaco determined the trains' ever-changing schedule because steamers could only approach the docks at mid- or high tide.
Loomis sometimes stopped the train at his mansion north of Long Beach, and passengers had to await his return. His mansion was not the only unscheduled stop. According to local historian Lucile McDonald,
"The train stopped on the slightest excuse — to pick up a family carrying tired children, to shovel drifting sand from the curve at Oceanside, or to shoot a bear spied in a field. Once at Cranberry, passengers waited while the engine crew caught a runaway horse. Another time a woman dropped a ball of yarn out of a coach window; the conductor halted the train, got out, retrieved the wool, and rolled it" (McDonald, Coast Country, 100-101).
Despite its irregularity, the railroad carried a large amount of cargo and large numbers of passengers. Each week it delivered about a thousand 80-pound sacks of oysters to Ilwaco.
Coastwise steamships carried the shellfish from Astoria to San Francicso. The line also transported logs, lumber, clams, and cranberries to the port. Flatcars carried horses, cows, and dogs for families who set up their households for the summer at seaside cottages.
In 1900 the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company, a much larger firm that was itself a subsidiary of the Union Pacific, bought the Ilwaco line.
In 1907 the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company shifted its operations to the deep-water bay at Megler, a few miles upstream from Ilwaco. There, boats could dock at any tide, bringing some regularity to the line's schedule.
The Union Pacific consolidated a number of lines, including the Ilwaco railroad, into one group in 1910.
Farewell to the Railroad
The railroad continued to operate, though not very profitably, until 1930, when it closed.
As automobiles grew in popularity, fewer people relied on steamers and railroads to travel.
In her book about the Long Beach Peninsula, historian Nancy Lloyd quotes the North Beach Tribune's account of the railroad's last day, which occurred on September 9, 1930:
"By the time the train blew in at about 3:30 p.m. hundreds of school children and all the citizens of Ilwaco were gathered on the streets of the town ... . The mayor mounted the rear end of the train and addressed the gathering as one who had witnessed the breaking of the ground through Ilwaco for the laying of the roadbed over forty years ago. He spoke of the very great part played by the little railroad in the affairs of the Peninsula and complimented many of the old time employees of the road, wishing them all 'Good Will and God Speed' in their future activities ... .
"After the rather informal greetings the weird and sadly beautiful strains of 'taps' were sounded from the bugle by Charles Saari, and as the train departed, Ken Inman and his valiant crew shot from the old cannon a parting salute while the locomotive crew blew the long trailing whistle of the railroad man's farewell salute" (Lloyd, 147).
Crews soon pulled up the tracks, and the railroad's furnishings were sold, often to locals for use in their summer cottages. Some of its cars became cottages themselves. All that remains is the route, widened and paved, known today as State Highway 103.
This essay made possible by:
Association of Washington Cities
A coot with a cluster of zebra mussels at Walthamstow Wetlands. The coots seem to be very effective at controlling this invasive species of shellfish in shallower waters, however they do not dive very deep so any mussels in deeper waters will be untouched.
It's not summer without a lobster dinner, so I caved and paid the West Coast prices for some Atlantic lobster. #worthit
The village of Boddam lies just to the south of Peterhead, and separated from it by Sandford Bay and Peterhead Power Station. Opinions differ as to whether Buchan Ness, a headland reached by a bridge from the village, is in fact the most easterly point in mainland Scotland: it depends on whether you count Keith Inch just over two miles to the north. Once an island, this now forms part of Peterhead harbour and projects a little further east than Buchan Ness.
Being so close to Peterhead, it is inevitable that Boddam tends to be overshadowed by it. This wasn't always so: a map produced in the 1600s showed Boddam to be larger than its northern neighbour. Just to the south stood Boddam Castle, built by the Keiths of Ludquharn in the 1500s. The most notable early member of the family to be born at Boddam Castle was Sir William Keith (1669-1749), who went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Today only fragmentary ruins remain of Boddam Castle. The headland location chosen by the Keiths for their castle was guarded by the start of the cliffs that run for five miles south west from here to Slains Castle and Cruden Bay. About half way along this stretch of cliffs is the Bullers of Buchan, a collapsed sea cave forming an almost circular pot and an arch.
Boddam's early development was largely due to the shelter afforded by Buchan Ness, which made it an attractive base for fishing boats. This led to a short-lived fishing station being established here by the Dutch in the years around 1700. But the development of modern Boddam dates back to a decision in the 1820s by the Northern Lighthouse Board to build a lighthouse on Buchan Ness. This was completed in 1827 by Robert Stevenson. The lighthouse tower is 35m high, and there are 166 steps leading to the top. The distinctive red band was added in 1910. Buchan Ness Lighthouse was automated in 1988, and the foghorn, known locally as the Boddam Coo fell silent in 2000.
The arrival of the lighthouse was followed in 1831 by the construction of a harbour. In the 1840s the harbour was greatly expanded by George Hamilton-Gordon, the 4th Earl of Aberdeen. Further harbour improvements were made in the 1870s to provide for ships exporting the red Peterhead granite being quarried in ever larger quantities from Stirling Hill, a mile to the south east. These included the construction of a tramway linking the quarries with the harbour. The quarries also helped attract the railway to Boddam: a branch line from Ellon arrived in 1897.
The early decades of the 1900s saw much of Boddam's fishing fleet attracted away by the better harbour facilities available at Peterhead. The railway closed to passengers in 1932, and to freight in 1945. After the Second World War, Boddam became home to RAF Buchan, an important Cold War radar station tracking Russian aircraft over the North Atlantic. Until 2005 this was also home to one of the UK's two "Control and Reporting Centres", which oversaw the UK's air defences. This role has since passed to RAF Boulmer in Northumberland, and the RAF Buchan "domestic site" in Boddam is due to be redeveloped.
Like many other communities across Aberdeenshire, Boddam has benefitted considerably from the oil boom since the 1970s. Boddam harbour has at times served as an oil support base, and in 1976 rebuilding took place to allow the harbour to be used to support the new oil-fired Peterhead Power Station, which continues to dominate views north west from the village. In the early 1990s the power station was converted to be able to use gas as well as oil. Boddam harbour remains home to a number of small fishing boats, and to Thistle Seafood's fish processing plant.
Boddam Harbour
The most delicious Italian Shellfish Risotto, made with shrimp, mussels, baby clams, crab, a good white wine, lots of garlic, tomatoes and an exquisite saffron seafood stock. Originally from Lombardy, the northern side of Italy, this Italian classic risotto has become a popular dish all around the world.
For this recipe, please go to:
creativeelegancecatering.blogspot.com/2024/02/shellfish-r...
For hundreds more delicious recipes and mouthwatering food images, please go to:
Wodarch's introduction to the study of conchology
London :Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Browne and by J. Mawe,1825.
We've got a ways to go in this album (there are 132 pictures, though I may not scan every one of them, and others I may scan as pages, rather than individual photos), but the process of putting the album up on Flickr and looking at each individual photo has changed not only the way I feel about this album, but also the way I feel about my photographs in general.
I've always been offended by those people (often the kind of people who keep booths in antique malls) who encourage prospective buyers to purchase their photos in order to gain some "instant relatives." Of course in my reaction there is more than a touch of defensiveness. I like the family I've got, my sister and
my mother and my stepbrothers, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles and a whole slew of cousins, but I wish I had a wife (who loved me, whom I loved) and children (ditto). I haven't been too successful on that end. So I wish I had more family, wish my father were here and my sister Wendy were here, wish for a completeness that I can never have.
But I don't need any "instant relatives." And in looking over a
little box of family snapshots on a recent visit home, I realized that those photos have meaning for me that none of my collected images have.
Still, in struggling to scan and post this West Coast Chopped-up HodgePodge of a MishMash album, and being frustrated and irritated by the collector's lack of rigor, I realized that, willy-nilly, those are qualities I must treasure too, and that, now that I am in possession of this album, I bear a responsibility to it. Why would that man put that newspaper clipping in the album (the one that tells about the 1915 Washington State College football team, the one that he played right end for, the one that won the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1916)? He didn't need to remind himself that
he was right end. He did it for whoever was intended to see the album, but at some point, whoever that was fell by the wayside, and then an antique dealer (well, a used furniture dealer) got ahold of the album, and now I have it.
So his relatives are gone, by choice or chance, and I'm left holding the bag.
This album, these hundred odd photos, with their long train of unknowns, may be all that's left to evoke a life once lived---this ragtag assemblage-the earthquake photos and the San Francisco parade, the battleships in drydock (coming), the frat boys in line at the makeship latrine (coming), the serious college girls with their microscopes (coming), the hikers on that eighteen-mile slog in the Cascades (more of that coming), the professional photo of New York's Central Park (coming, and what the heck is that here for), and the absolutely wonderful photo of the church(coming), stark, matter-of-fact, amazing in its simplicity.
I've always liked the New Testament's admonition that "God is love." I never have troubled myself much beyond that, and I'd guess that, in my rather wayward life, when I've kept those words in front of me, I've pretty much stayed on the path. I regret that I have to choose which photos to buy, and I feel a mite guilty sometimes when I buy the photo of the "prettier" girl (in my, of course, highly subjective opinion). I think that, the closer I got to the divine, the more I would see that, truly, all things are equal. If we all saw things that way, it would be a whole heck of a lot harder to pull the trigger.
The point of this little ramble is that the lobster photo puts this album over-the-top. I feel a kinship of common humanity with this goofy guy who wanted this lobster photo in here with everything else. I don't think he wanted to eat the lobster (though he may have enjoyed eating lobster). I think the lobster is an acceptance of the strange, the other, the different, the not-self. "Look at this lobster," the lobster photo says. "It's just a lobster (not dinner). Isn't it weird? Don't you love it?"
It is, and I do. I'm going to have to stop bitching about the album after this photo.
Oh yeah, this photo is this month's edition of Mrwaterslide's Monthly Magazine.