a bird

James and I saw this large black seagull type of bird at the beach that we decided to try to catch. We approached it from two opposite sides but as we walked up to it it was just standing there and didn't try to move at all. As we were just thinking what's wrong with this bird, we noticed that it was standing right in front of and facing a pile of mangled feather and bones that was appearantly another bird of the same type. We walked around the bird, but it didn't seem to care that it was two feet away from two large humans, it just stood there. I went up to it and tried to see if I could touch it, it slowly walked away a little bit and then stopped again. I have never seen anything so depressed, nothing seemed to be physically wrong with it it didn't look wounded or anything, but it just didn't have any motivation to move. we followed it a bit more and eventually I reached out my hand to touch it. when it saw me extend out my hand it just collapsed into the sand and sat there. we pet it for a bit. then we went back to look at the dead bird. it seemed to have been dead for a while, it looked pretty dried up and parts of the legs only had bone. I don't know how long that live one had been standing here by this dead one. but it's pretty amazing. maybe that's why it's so weak cuz it's just been standing there instead of looking for things to eat. or James said maybe it's cuz it has bird flu or something and we're going to die cuz we touched it. we buried the dead bird with sand. maybe if the live one doesn't see it anymore it'll move on. we could've buried the live one too, it was just sitting there, but we decided that probably wasn't very nice

we tried to climb across a short cliff on the way back to the other side of the beach, that wasn't a very good idea. James tried it a bit and said he couldn't do it. I was a bit more stubborn so I climbed out further. the rock surface was mostly flat and corroded and there weren't too many things to hold onto. I tried to find some small protrusions to put my hands and feet and inched my way out. shortly after I climbed out, I was flat on the wall and looking for the next thing to move to, a chunk of the protrusion my left foot was anchored on broke off. My foot sliped a bit, I put it back on, but considering the protrusion was pretty small to start with, there was not much ledge left and my left foot anchor was now on shaky ground (literally), and none of my other holds were big enough to stabilize me if something else goes. I also realized these corroded protrusions aren't really solid at all and can break off anytime if I put too much weight on them. That was when I immediately decided to climb back to safety. but I couldn't see what was around my back foot at all because I was facing the other way and I had to push my body flat against the wall to keep from falling off.

I took my right foot off to search backwards by feel for another hold. but that was kindda scary cuz my left foot anchor was already pretty sketchy and I didn't want my right foot to be off hangingin in mid air searching around. I tried to get James to look for me and tell me where I could put my right foot, we tried that for a little bit but then I decided I didn't have time to be doing that I needed a faster way to get off this wall asap before another one of my holds breaks off and I'm screwed. I asked James to reach out to me, I was able to grab his hand but I looked at his position and wasn't sure if he had enough leverage and I wasn't going to risk pulling him off if my right foot slips off during the pivot.

Eventually, I found a way to turn my body around to face the other way with reasonable confidence that I wouldn't fall off during the manuever. Once I was able to see where I was going, I was able to climb back to safety. so eventually nobody fell off and it was kindda fun.

on the walk back to where the rest of the group was, we saw someone tied a huge piece of seaweed to his small dog (the seaweed was too big for the little dog to drag). that was pretty hilarious.