No Photos Today

Today started with a heavy fog, warm and soupy. It was kind of nice at 5am -- no chill in the air, a still calm, the scent of summer in the humid air. It looked like a promising start to the day. After checking the weather to see that the radar looked clear, I headed out to the beach. Rain was in the forecast, but that is wrong so often that I took advantage of the relatively rain-free morning.

I'm glad I went out at dawn. The beach was cool and damp, with flocks of shorebirds silently awaiting my approach. I finally found 'my' Bonaparte's Gulls -- I hadn't seen them at Fort Pickens or Perdido Key and was worried they may have left for their breeding grounds while I was in Delaware. They really are elegant for gulls, and that's saying quite a lot!

I tried to doa bird survey on Santa Rosa yesterday, but was completely rained out -- I couldn't see five feet in front of my face. Today was a little better. The fog made things difficult at first -- my glasses and my binoculars both collected thick screens of condensation until the sun finally burned through the fog around 9. I was pretty optimistic, and with good reason. I actually finished the entire 7 mile south shore before night fell again... As I neared the Navarre gate, the sky turned black as a new moon night, and the rain started again. At first, it was soft, large drops that plopped gently against my hat and rain gear. By the time I completed my survey and headed to the post-Ivan blacktop remnants, the rain had taken on the qulaity of flying nails, cutting through my cap, my layers of raingear and finding sneaky ways around my glasses. The nearest shelter, open-sided picnic pavilions at Opal Beach, were three miles across open beach, lit with lightning and pelted with shards of windblown rain. It was summer again.

After nearing Opal Beach, I decided to keep going to my truck, another 4 miles away at the west gate. I had coffee and a heater in there! The rain gentled along the way and the warm winds helped dry me off. Warm rain is so much nicer than the icy winter rains of the past few months. I almost didn't mind being soaked :) After spending a few mind-numbing hours cleaning up data at the office, I really wished I had toughed out the rain and stayed on the beach, at least until the thunder made my boss hunt me down.

Tomorrow looks lovely -- maybe I can get the north shore finished then!