Birds and More at Shell Key Preserve

Hi Everyone -

Hope you are all having a great week!

We had another fun weekend. Saturday, I cleaned and Glenn did yardwork for most of the day, but Saturday night, Chad and Lisha came up and met us for dinner at the Green Springs Bistro, which was lovely.

They told us that they had recently found a baby owl that was being attacked by crows and seemed to be exhausted and unwell. They rescued it - put it in a cat carrier - and drove all around looking for a place that would care for it. They finally found a wildlife vet that would treat the little guy and keep him safe.

Lisha said that in the midst of everything, they did not take any pics, but that the owl looked like this (pic taken from the internet):

Cutest thing ever.

After dinner, they came back over to the house to hang out by the pool for a while. It was fun catching up with them.

On Sunday, we decided our blog-worthy activity would be going to Fort Desoto Beach and actually visiting the Fort. (Some of you might remember that we went there last year to take the dogs to the Dog Beach. They did not like the ocean, and we didn't stay long enough to explore.)

So anyway, my dad has taken us to many forts and historic places in my life, and this was THE WORST FORT EVER.

There were no signs, nothing telling you anything about the fort and why it was there or what happened. There were a bunch of big guns laying around, but a few small signs indicated that most of them had never been fired, and that they had been brought to the fort in the 1980s. LAME!

If you want to read about the fort's history, which really is not very interesting, you can do so here.

The best part of the fort by far was the view from the top.

So anyway, we were at the fort for about 12 minutes and we were done with it. So now what?

We had seen signs for a ferry to a nearby island called Shell Key that we had heard was, not surprisingly, a good place to go shelling. So we headed there.

These gentlemen were at the marina.

We headed out to Shell Key where we had two hours to explore. Shell Key is an uninhabited island and a bird refuge. There are no manmade structures on the island - no dock, restrooms, nothing. It was beautiful.

The water was warm and clear - I felt like we were in the Caribbean.

In the future, we would take the morning trip instead of the afternoon trip because even though we found some nice shells, we heard they get picked over in the morning. And we also both got a bit of sunburn on our shoulders (we wore sunscreen, but must have sweated it off). No shade on Shell Key.

But we saw a lot of birds.

This is a Long Billed Curlew

Sorry - I stole this picture off the web, but this is an American Oystercatcher. I saw two of them, but they flew off before I got a pic.

Great Blue Heron - I actually took this picture since I was holding Glenn's camera while he searched for shells in the surf.

Ibis

I'm pretty sure these are Common Snipe. They gave us a bird guide.

Laughing gulls in flight. Love this pic!

Another very exciting feature of the island was that there were schools of manta rays swimming down the shoreline about every five minutes. We saw tons of them! Manta rays swim near the surface of the water and are black with white bellies, unlike stingrays who lay on the bottom of the ocean. Manta rays also are harmless - no stingers - and seem to be pretty friendly.

Hard to photograph, but here was my attempt.

On the boat ride back, we also saw a mother dolphin swimming with her baby. Glenn just barely captured this moment...

Upon our return to the dock, we were greeted by this fellow, who clearly wanted his picture taken.

Snowy Egret (they have bright yellow feet)

All in all a successful day at Shell Key. Most exciting, Glenn found me a whole, undamaged sand dollar in the surf.

Here's our whole haul...

Hard to tell, but these are pretty big. The sand dollar is about the size of my palm.

Here's a very sweaty selfie - signing off from Shell Key...

Take care, everyone! Later, gators!