Come Along on Morning Turtle Patrol

If you are not familiar with Re-nourishment, it means pumping sand from the sea back onto eroded beaches to keep them 'whole' or grow the beach. We have groynes so don't re-nourish our beach, but they do to the north and south of us.

There is a big project, delayed by Hurricane Irma, which sadly is about to start now.  As the re-nourishment process is very disruptive to the beach, it is not helpful during turtle nesting season.  The boats arrived this past week to start the process just as nesting begins.

Here's a prime example we see on our morning turtle patrol (it is early morning so the sun has not yet blessed the beach or these pictures!)

Ugly yellow - and ineffective - inflatable groynes are being removed

and replaced with these rock structures - will it work
to protect the beach and hold the sand???

Further down the beach are happier sights - the  Skimmer birds gathering to form their nesting colony - we have to drive carefully around them to avoid any disturbance!

Sea Turtle Tracker truck (it carries our supplies)
avoiding the skimmers

Aren't they lovely? Here's a skimmer actually 'skimming' for food at the water's edge.



We are on turtle patrol with the Sea Turtle Trackers. Driving on sand can be a bit like driving on snow.

No turtle nests yet . . . but they are nesting just south of us and many have been spotted just offshore. Local Gulf water temperature is about 75 F today, we need to reach 80 F and they will be nesting.
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If you are really lucky and eagle-eyed you will see some frisky dolphin behaviour of which we have had plenty this Spring, ably captured here by Ann Weaver who studies our local dolphin population.

Turtling

Hubby on patrol

It's that turtle time of year; today and yesterday (4/21) were our first days out on morning patrol; no live turtles or nests yet just this friend ----------->

But we know the loggerheads are in the bay and gulf just offshore --

Sea temperature is 22C/72F, so a little bit warmer and the females will be nesting on our beaches.

Thank you for this loggerhead photo Hubbard's Marina.

<--We have 99% loggerheads on our coast, and excitedly . . .

several leatherbacks, an endangered species, were spotted a few miles offshore yesterday! Watch the leatherback video here.


Looking skyward, what should mini me see .. but a helicopter with sea legs! First time to spot one of these flying above our beach.




Turtling, as mini me calls it, was a good way to celebrate Earth Day, along with helping out at the Sea Turtle Trackers booth at the community event.

You may recall I wrote about 'bird mobbing' last May 20 (with video) - well the blackbird and the Great Blue Heron are at it again! We heard a loud heron clacking noise  which drew us out onto our balcony to see what was going on.

Back to people, we just avoided a recall election of two city commissioners here in our beach community as
   

decided by judicial decree  - only in the nick of time as the ballots had already been mailed out.

I had never seen a recall ballot before and if you haven't here's what it looks like. Yup it is an old fashioned paper ballot with no possibility of hanging chads!

Just finished a table runner I salvaged from my Quilt First, Then Construct class at the March Lakeland Sewing & Quilt Expo. In between turtling this week, friends and I will be stuffing pillows for the local children's hospital dialysis unit. Then back to making a basket or
two . . .hope to make a turtle shaped one some day!

Quirkies - -recognize the focal squares?

Mini Me on Adventure & almost eaten . . .

Mini Me hasn't appeared in this blog for awhile so as she ventured out to North Carolina recently, she wanted to share. Mini Me found the big world a bit dangerous. . .

(this dog's nose is just the 

right height to access the table!)

domestic pets to navigate ---

not to mention equipment . . .

chores to perform too!

flower boxes to plant for spring

First we tramped through the woods to mark the property lines - an afternoon of fun & delight!

Next deer to feed and photograph

very big and scary from mini me's point of view

hard work moving all this deer corn

Lots of time spent . . . no not quilting sadly (but did have time to test out the 60 year old solid metal sewing machine)  . .  .

. . . but ancestry hunting through old boxes of photos and scrapbooks uncovering lots of new bits of information.

can you spot mini me?

Hubby rented this BIG pick-up to get back to the airport - even I found the tires came up to my waist!

and back to Florida, straight to the Appreciation lunch for us Ombudsmen - what a T-shirt hey?

And what should my eyes see today on the beach, but . . . a lady swimming in the salt water whilst talking on her iphone!  Go figure.