Stretch's New Perch! 8/25/11

Today's walk was similar to yesterday's.  When I arrive at the beach.  There is nothing and no one there.  It feels very lonely.

Suddenly Stretch comes flying in to greet me!

And look where he lands!  On the corner of the pier roof!

I love my Stretch!  He makes for some great picture taking!

I was at the beach the other night with Mark and he was up there then too!

He looks around.  He is not up there for long.

 He is only up there long enough for me to snap a few pictures and he takes off.  Guess where he goes now?

He flies down and sits on top of the rest rooms that are located halfway down the pier.  I have never seen him here.  He cracks me up!

He's not up here long either.  Stretch takes off.  Don't know where he is headed too.

So I start my walk and head down the beach.

 Immediately, I notice that the "cliff" is forming again.

 These next two pictures are the same part of the beach as the above two pictures.  These were taken yesterday.

I find these shifting sands very interesting to watch.  It is going the whole way down the beach again.

A group of pelicans fly close by.

As I walk along, I am noticing that the water is not very clear today.  I run into my friend Linda and she says the same thing.  She is almost done with her walk.  We chat a while and then go our separate ways.  Since the water is "murky" as Linda said, I don't pay too much attention.  Starting to get the power walk going.  Then something does catch my eye in the water.  It is different from what I have been seeing.

It is a stingray.  A different kind.  He is all by himself.  I'm surprised I got this picture and it is as clear as it is.  He turned and was swimming away from the beach.  So this all I got of him.

I thought this was funny when I saw it.  My first thought was I hope there's not a whole bird under there!  I wasn't digging this one up to find out.

I see some of the devil rays but the water is not clear and it's very hard to see.

Another flock of pelicans fly by close again.

After walking a while and looking at the new "cliff", I spin around and take another picture of it.

While spinning around another "cliff" catches my eye.

There is one happening up in the dunes.  I hadn't noticed this before, so I'm not sure if it is new.

When I was chatting with my friend Linda, she told me about a sea turtle nest that had hatched.  She said there were eggs laying all around.  It was really neat.  So I had been looking for it.  I finally come across it.

I found this just fascinating.

Wished I could have seen them hatching.  That would be fun to watch!

Here's the view from the nest.  Poor little guys have a long way to the water.  They must be exhausted when they get there.  I wonder how long it takes them to crawl down there?

A few yards away, is the nest I saw yesterday.  I check on it again today.  You can see the metal grate over the nest.  It has some ribbons tied on it.  I'm wondering if someone doesn't come out at night and remove it or if the babies just crawl through the holes.

They have worked on the trough to the beach and cleaned it up for the babies.  They must be expecting more to hatch.  It is still  a long way for these babies to go!

On my walk back, I come across this dead fish.  I stop and flip him over to see what he looked like.  Yes, I used a stick.  I didn't touch him.

I come across another sea turtle nest.  I go up and look at it and wonder how they know there are eggs here.

Arriving back at the pier, I look up and see something on the corner of the pier.  I figure it is probably Stretch again.

Being so far away it is hard to tell.  I snap another picture a bit closer.  It just looks weird.

As I get closer, I see that it is not only Stretch, but Leggs has joined him too!  I haven't seen two of them up there before.

Stretch takes off before I can get any closer.

Leggs stays up there while I finish up my walk.  So I take a bunch of pictures of her up there.

Stretch is down under the pier.

I snap one last picture of Leggs and I am done with my walk.

I head up off the beach.  While rinsing my feet at the shower, I notice that today's walk has been especially rough on the pedicure!  I just painted them a day ago!  That's why today's blog is late.  Had to redo my toenails! Priorities!

Stretch & the Gang! 8/24/11

As I walk up the pier ramp yesterday for my pit stop, the first thing I see over to the right of the pier, is Stretch up on top of the garbage can and Leggs standing on a pile of sand someone made yesterday.  This is a funny site.

As I look over to the left of the pier (the side I usually walk on), the rest of the gang is over there.

The top of the trash can seems to be a favorite place today!  Before I even get up the ramp, Stretch takes off of the garbage can and heads down toward the water.

Leggs stays on her perch until I get down to the beach.

There were six of the great blue herons there today.  I never know which one to photograph.  So I photographed all of them!

This one hung around the garbage can for a while.  One of the other ones chased him off the top of the can.  Reminds me of Michael and Maria fighting over a seat on the couch!

One of them takes off to go hang out under the pier with Stretch.

Then they decide that's not where they really want to be.  They fly out from under the pier and land just a few yards away.

Still hangin' out by the garbage can.

Stretch chasing Leggs!

It's fun to watch them when the are interacting with each other.

A flock of Pelicans flies over while I am photographing Stretch and the Gang.

This picture is sort of neat.  Look closely and you can see a school of fish. When you first glance at this picture it looks like nothing.  Look closer and you can see the fish.  You can even see their eyes.

Some Pelicans fly right towards me.

Yesterday only saw one group of stingrays.  They were a large group though.  I followed them for quite awhile.  You will see in the one video below they get hung up in a tree branch.  That's where I lost them.

I got some good closeups of some of them.

This one has a piece of seaweed on his back.

My friend, Linda that I met last week told me that these stingrays were manta rays also called "devil rays".  When they travel in schools another name for a school of devil rays is a "fever"!

Yesterday, Linda told me about the sea turtle nests, so now I am off to look for it.  She said it was clearly marked, I couldn't miss it.

Don't know how I missed this yesterday!  Guess I was too busy looking in the water at the "devil rays"!

They put this black netting around the nest and then dig a path to the water for the babies.  The path makes it easier for them to find the water.

Here is the actual nest.  There is a wire grate over it.  I guess to keep out predators.

As I was approaching the nest, a photographer was there also.  He was getting ready to photograph a family on the beach.  He was showing the children the nest.  He told me that the babies came out last night.  He said he was there earlier, before they came out and he missed it.  He pointed out their tracks.  Said they weren't there when he was there last night.

A couple went the wrong way, going around the corner and back up the beach.  Hopefully they found their way down to the water.

The trough was lined with their little footprints all the way to the water's edge.  I think this would be fascinating to watch.   However, they don't leave the nest until around midnight or later when most of their predators are not around and can't see them.  This helps ensure their safety to the ocean.

Getting up at 5:30am everyday, I don't think I could come to the beach at midnight and wait for them to hatch and come out.  I'll work on that for next year.

Arriving back at the pier, Stretch and some of the gang are still hanging around.  Nice to see them.

Stretch looks a little ruffled!

Wonder what he was up too!

While my walk was a bit shorter today, I still really enjoyed it!