Turtle Walk #14

Started our walk this morning, hopeful that we might see tiny little turtle tracks leading to the water.

The sky was beautiful as we walked onto the beach.

Nothing like finding left over, left behind fish bait.  Now it's super stinky and has ants living in there with it.   You have to wait to pick that up on the way back.  Yuck!

There were a lot of holes on the beach this morning that could be a problem for little turtles to crawl though.

Plastic, plastic, plastic everywhere.

Someones hair is probably out of control

about now.

Common shells this morning was all I saw.

But, I didn't look closely, so there may be treasures just waiting for someone.

There were some big tracks that looked similar to dog tracks, in the sand near a couple of the turtle nests.

A coyote has been seen on the island and in the past week, it had been predating nests on the West End and it has worked it's way to the East End now. 

I wonder if that could be what the kind of tracks we saw, because they were pretty big.  There wasn't any sign that the nest had been dug into.

Just as a side note, we also have a black bear on the island.  I'm sure if you keep up with island news, you have already heard about it.  It's the talk of the island!  This is the first documented bear sighting and no one knows, for sure, how it got here.  There is speculation that it walked some areas during low tide and swam the rest.  The bear's not talkin'. A motion activated, infrared camera along the Bailey Tract Trail caught an image of the bear around 4:30 one morning.  The baby black bear is believed to be about 1 1/2 years old and weighs 40 to 60 lbs.  He's been around for a little over a month and had caused no known problems.  But, the little guy got into mischief

last week.  He got into some bee hives and ate $20,000 worth of It ate bees, larva and honey, according to the bee farmer.  Now that he got in trouble, so to speak, Florida Fish and Wildlife and the Ding Darling Refuge have set up a bear trap, in hopes of sending him to a more suitable environment.

The Lone Fisherman

There was some cute sand art this morning.

More tracks at another nest.

The Lone Sheller

Another noodle.  We find, at least, one every week.

At least a little turtle could go through the tunnel in this one. :)

When we got to the end of our zone and turned to go back, I was surprised to see, what looked like, rain coming down from a part of it.  Whatever it was, it was beautiful!

A crippled chair left for someone else

to carry away. :(

A big heart.

A couple of craters side by side.  That made my imagination run rampant. :)

As we got to the end of our zone, which is at Tarpon Bay public access, there was a lot of trash to pick up.  There's always more at the public accesses because there are more visitors.  When we finished picking up and started walking away, we were talking and thinking that the City should have an employee to check the public beaches for trash each morning.  I looked back, just as a city employee came walking out onto the beach with a long handled trash picker upper. :)  Woo~Hoo!  I hope that continues.  But, he got lucky today.

Balloon remnants that could have been sea food.

A few steps away, there were several small balloons laying, that hadn't been blown up.  I don't really know why you would have these on the beach, but they are a bad thing.

I thought this made a nice picture; a family out together on a morning beach walk.  They were showing the little ones sea birds, and sea shells.  It would be wonderful if that family could see some baby turtles.