Harassing Plovers and Other Fun

I finally remembered to take a picture of the road, or 'corridor' as it's more properly called. I finished marking the boundaries to keep vehicles out of the new wetlands and then I moved to the west end of the Fort Pickens area to clean. People are such slobs at the beach! I got less than a mile of the beach cleaned and ended up with a full truck load, after putting much of it in the recycling bin and trash bins in the parking lot... There were toothbrushes, beer cans, gatorade jugs, oil containers, sun glasses, masks and snorkels, a new bottle of ranch dressing (in the strong Florida sun -- yuck!), a full bottle of Thai hotsauce, lots of beach toys, a dozen sneakers, the prop to a small boat, a nose cone (to a plane?) and anything and everything else you can possibly imagine. At least it was a good workout, and the beach looks a little better.

There was a large group of Snowy and Wilson's Plovers near Battery 234. I worry that I harassed them too much as I slowly moved between the surf and the dunes, bobbing up and down as I gathered random bits of plastic. They kept moving, a few feet at time, but they were letting me get really close. I finally went back to the mule for my camera and got a couple of nice shots -- I really wanted one with a snowy looking straight at me, but they didn't oblige. If only they understood English!