Hi All! This week was pretty good over here. I spent the weekend on Cape Cod and the weather, while on the cool side, was pretty good on Saturday. Cool, but I still spent some time on the beach and (brr) even went in the water. This is where the smile comes in.

West Dennis Beach is a very popular beach and is pretty long. I ran down there on Saturday morning and noticed that they had the main beach closed off most of the day, opening it from 8 – 5. The residence beach was still open. Also, the last half of the access road was closed to car traffic and the dunes surrounded by ropes.

It is piping plover nesting season, and some have chicks in those dunes, so…

Anyway, I was on the residence beach in the early afternoon. It is far from the protected dunes, so I wasn’t thinking about plovers. Also, though there were a lot of people on the main beach, the residence beach was empty. I took a walk and then went in to swim in the cold water (the water was actually almost as warm as the air,but the air was cool…)

When I came out of the water, I walked up, reached down for my towel, only to have something skitter out from underfoot.

A piping plover.

It hunkered down in a nearby divot (almost invisible), so I backed up a few steps as I dried. It got up and wandered a little farther off. As I was watching I saw another movement. A little puff came out of the dunes and greeted the plover. As I was watching the baby, some people walked by and stopped right behind me. I turned and there was a third plover just behind me. It skittered by and then hunkered down in some nearby dried sea grass where it was invisible if you didn’t know it was there.

After the people walked away leaving an empty beach, the baby went down to the water’s edge. The first plover, who I think was the father, hung out not far from me while the other, which I call the mother, stayed hidden.

I laid down on my towel and watched them. After a while the chick came back up, but pretty far down the beach. The father went down to greet it as it came up closer to the dunes. I looked away for a moment and lost them, but I still saw the momma.

I was pretty dry by then, so I took off leaving the little plovers to enjoy the almost empty beach on their own.

Here is a photo of a baby plover I took several years ago. The adults are small and the chicks are tiny.

So that was my smile for the week, hanging on the beach with a plover family.

What made you smile?

****

Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week.  Why don’t you share it?  I hope you can join in!

Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas.  If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity.  Don’t smile about the misfortune of others.  Don’t smile in a way to excludes others.  Make sure a 12 year old can read it.

To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile.  Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ).   You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me).  Note – I am no longer compiling the smiles into a weekly post as I used to – Sorry, I do not have time.