Lovers Key State Park and Sanibel

Well, my pictures are definitely out of sync with the blog these days. The pictures I have here are from my 4 mile walk down the beach on Monday morning. I took my camera as I wanted to get pictures of the cormorant that are waiting for me each morning.




These I believe are two cormorants standing next to each other on the old pilings that are on my walk.
This is a nine legged starfish which was about 16 inches in diameter. I had seen a live one the day before and this day I saw several dead ones as well as a couple of live ones. Again, I had never seen them down here before.

This is a picture taken from the beginning of my walk. We are on the northern part of Ft. Myers Beach and you pass under this big pier to go down south which is where I usually walk in the mornings. Further to the north there is a wonderful park where gopher turtles and lots of raccoons live.

This is just one of the cormorants.

Two days ago we went to Lovers Key State Park which I love. We took a nature walk in the morning and heard again about all the different kinds of mangroves and habitats. I picked a day when I knew the tide would be high to take the walk. I picked up a lot of shells and spent quite a bit of time in the water as it was chrystal clear blue and very warm and inviting. Warren actually found a dead sea horse which seemed to be the find of the day for the naturalist!! I swear the water is much warmer than usual. They have had so little rain, they are in near drought conditions down here but that has returned the estuaries to their proper salinity after the awful hurricanes three years ago. I think that is why the shrimp is cheaper and WONDERFUL this year. We have been eating a lot of it just as shrimp cocktail, it is so yummy and doesn't bother my allergies like the other stuff does.

Today, we headed off to Sanibel again at low tide to visit the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Like Lovers Key, there were a lot of birds but most especially the wonderful Roseate Spoonbills which are large and shocking pink with these big flat bills. I hadn't seen those except in Texas before so it was nice to see so many at Lovers Key and again today. We saw lots of the white pelicans too which migrate here from Washington state and Oregon. Warren really enjoyed it as well. We then headed to the beach on Sanibel and I walked again picking up lots of shells along the way -- although not as unusual as on Lovers Key. There were a couple I hadn't seen before. I have quite a stash which will join the stash I have at home. I will get them into a proper display. I have the "best" of each on a display in my bedroom. Each visit I get to upgrade a bit. Can you tell my parents were both shell collectors? My father was an internationally known malacologist (Dr. H. Burrington Baker) in his time and trained me early where to look for shells.