Beach stuff/erosion

Sanibel Island is a barrier island off the Southwest coast of Florida.  It is about 12 miles long, shaped like a crescent or boomarang.  Its beaches on the Gulf side vary in width and in popularity.  Unlike many other beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, Sanibel's beaches are not groomed.  No machines run up and down the beach combing up cans, seaweed, driftwood, shells, dead fish, abandoned sand toys.  That's probably why shell collectors love it - - I myself cannot leave Sanibel without carrying home a shell or two to add to the bags that rest semi-forgotten in a corner somewhere.

I've posted a few photographs of some of the things I saw this month - besides birds, people, sunrises and sunsets.

At low tide, the sea leaves behind seagrasses,
big barnacled pen shells, and many fragments of smaller shells.

A close-up shot of a barnacle-covered pen shell.



I think these are Florida Fighting Conchs, about 2.5 inches. 
When a very high tide recedes, sometimes these animals are exposed.
I saw a child picking them up and tossing them back into the sea.
 He didn't realize in six hours or so  the next high tide would cover them again.



This little olive shell's animal left a distinctive trail,
despite its unbelievably slow progress.

The receding tide also left behind this damaged sea star.
Four of its arms are damaged, and five are intact.
It's about the size of a dinner plate.

One morning the tide left behind many tiny silvery fish -
sardines, like this one, killed by a recent red tide.



These plovers peck around in the sand, seeking something so small I couldn't identify it.  
These birds  are not solitary; seldom is one seen by itself.



Sometime during the past year, the sea crept (or swept) up and
stole away part of the barrier of grass and shrubs.  

That presents a problem for the owners of the condo building
whose boardwalk  now ends abruptly some 4 feet above the beach.

I doubt that the sea carried this hibiscus blossom ashore.
More likely the wind carried it here.

People build things in the sand, using molds, shells, sticks, leaves,
long seeds of the red mangrove, anything that comes to hand.

Here are two formal and geometric structures,
along with some of the "sculptor's" tools.

Sanibel is famous for its sea turtle; the females lumber ashore
in summer months to lay their eggs.
Here's a carefully  created and highly individualistic sea turtle.

Dotting the shore are dead shrubs ornamented in sea-worn, sun-bleached shells.
 Kind of the way hikers in the Scottish mountains will add a stone to a cairn,
Sanibel's beachcombers will add a shell to this.

A lone spot of brightness to end the visit.

Home, sweet home - ??

Ah, the beach!

I think we've settled back in.  Unpacked and laundered the salty/sandy clothes.  Put away another batch [small this time] of special shells.  Uploaded several hundred photographs.  And recall the joy of walking outside without coat/hat/mittens/etc.  Sanibel, I love you a lot.  Especially this year - the warmest two weeks in January I've ever known - even counting those years I spent in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida!

So here are some of my photographs of the beaches, the birds, the shells, the people.

dog fanciers and friends

Bikes for rent

Practicing the Sanibel Stoop

Early morning traffic stop - for white ibises with
their curved pink bills and long pink legs

"Happy New Year 2013" on the beach -
from a Canadian visitor?

An island pond next to the inn

Beach art at foggy dawn

water's edge with pelicans and gulls

Another kind of water's edge

Trimming the coconut palm to protect the inn's guests

Beachwalker at sunrise

A flock of gulls about to land.
Is Alfred Hitchcock filming here?

Sometimes dawn can be spectacular - - 

As can sunlight through dark clouds

Another of Sanibel's spectacular sunsets over the beach.

Fashion-conscious photographer:   did he choose those pants knowing
 he'd see the roseate spoonbills (the pink birds).

Wintertime blahs

I think that when I was much younger, winter didn't get to me as much as it does now.  It's not just the cold, all the time cold.  It's also the short days, waking up in the dark, and darkness returning in late afternoon. 
I spent a week on an island in Southwest Florida, at Sanibel.  I was warm there.  The days weren't much longer - sun rose about 7:15 am and set about 5:35pm. 

But the midday warmth made all the difference.  And the warmth slows things down, including people, who are warmed up and friendly.  The friendliness begins with a joke at the Chamber of Commerce.

There's a beach there.  It's not groomed, ever, except for the guy in the truck who drives on the beach and picks up pig knuckles (crabbers use them for bait and they wash up with the tide).  The beach has no lights, so no one's there at night except stargazers.  The reason is because on summer nights sea turtles crawl up the beach and lay their eggs in the dunes. Then 35-40 days later the baby turtles burst from their shells and scamper back to the sea, at night.   Lights would disorient them and they'd go the wrong way.  But why is the beach not groomed?  I couldn't get an answer to that.  But here's what it looks like.  Some of that stuff is red-brown macroalgae washed up in the storms a week before, but most of it is shells.  Lots and lots of large pen shells, many white scallops and small whelks and others that I cannot name.



Despite what it looks like, this is not man-made trash.  It's mostly large shells and macroalgae washed in by storms.



A funny beach creation has pen shell goatee, scallop shell nose, barnacle-crusted sunglasses, and macroalgae hair.

And there are always shell seekers walking on the sand or in the low tide shallows.  I've joined them, and brought home sacks of shells.  But I don't do anything with them.  They just stay in their sacks.

Ardent sheller at early morning low tide

Also shore birds galore.  Long-legged willetts, three kinds of gulls, and there are terns and little tiny things that scoot along just at the edge of the waves, stitching back and forth so quickly their legs disappear.

And in the wildlife refuge or out on Tarpon Bay, I see great large birds - cormorants and egrets and herons and the wonderful white pelicans.

cormorants and white pelicans share one of the oyster shell bars in the bay

And at the end of the day, the sun goes down behind the palm trees.

big crocodile

The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation sent a notice yesterday that the "one and only saltwater crocodile on the island was found dead on the East River Trail at SCCF, possibly a victim of the lengthy cold of January". This croc was a female, was known to be on the island for 25-plus years. In the words of the notice, "she helped define our community as one dedicated to living with wildlife, even the big, beautiful scary ones."

She was unique - there are lots of alligators on the island but no other crocodiles. Don't ask me the diffference - they are both big and both scary animals. But it was kind of nice to have seen this reptilian giant one sunny January day in 2007 in the wildlife refuge. She was just lying on the grass next to a water channel, sunning herself with her great scary mouth open. I took the photograph at the top of this piece.

Sanibel shore birds

We spent a few days on the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a video of white ibises feeding at the water's edge on Sanibel Island (not bay side, this is definitely the Gulf), January 8, 2010.

Another video is of herring gulls - the most common large sea gull on the East Coast, these two seem to be having noisy conversation.