SALTAIRE SUMMER, 2009: A KIDS VIEW OF SALTAIRE

A KIDS’ VIEW OF SALTAIRE
by Emma and Tim O’Shea

The weather has been rainy, but the bay is warm. The swimming area has ropes that go across that allow you to swim in lanes. There is a dock and a diving board. You can do any kind of jump you want off the diving board. Tim likes to do the cannonball, and Emma likes to do poses. Sometimes there are red jellyfish. You can avoid them by swimming around them, or jumping over them.

We have seen some Fire Island deer. Emma saw five today. One was on Pacific Walk, and two were down on Bay Promenade. She saw a mom and a baby on Broadway and knew it was a baby because it had white spots, and it was tiny.

The sun shines soon after the rain. Things look shiny and gold, and sometimes you see little rainbows reflecting off of them.

Some good places to play are the playground and the ballfield. The ballfield is right across from the playground. Sometimes the ballfield is locked at night or when it’s wet. It has huge puddles and they don’t want people playing in the puddles or slipping. There is a camp at the playground and ballfield that starts on July 6.


You can walk to the Fire Island Lighthouse, or ride a water taxi to Ocean Beach. Near the store on Broadway there is a library. The store has a dog named Einstein, and he lets you pet him. He sits on a pillow or on a golf cart. At the library you can read books, play games or work on your computer. You can fish on the ferry dock or from a boat. You can catch bluefish, fluke, striped bass, sea robins or skates.

If you want to see something really neat, go to the store and sit on the bench in front of the wine store. Look up and you will see two bird nests, one in each corner of the roof. The mother bird is sitting on her eggs. She has a dark blue top and back, a rusty orange neck, a white underside and a forked tail. When she flies you can see little white dots on the underside of the tail. We think she’s a kind of swallow. When the eggs hatch, we will tell you.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Tim and Emma O’Shea are 8 1/2 years old, and live in a house on the bayfront where the O’Shea family has been living for 60 years.



Post script: Tim and Emma left this past weekend. Can you post this addendum to their article on the BLOG? Tim and Emma O'Shea left recently for their home in CT, so this is posted by their aunt Patsy. The baby birds hatched about July 10 and are being fed by both parents. An observer noted the father bird feeding the young a full size dragonfly, and he said the babies ate it whole. Yet the mother seems to feed her brood a softer food. They are just little heads barely visible above the nest. Within a couple of weeks they will be testing out their wings, and maybe even taking test flights, just like Saltaire youth stand on the diving dock and take test flights into the bay.