Home Again

It's funny how fast the park has become my home. I spent about five weeks in Delaware, trying to help my Mom, and struggled with the decision to return here. I feel as if I abandoned her in Delaware, but I was abandoning myself there. This job may be ending in the fall, but it feeds my soul. I need to be here.

Mark, Monica and I spent the whole day at the Santa Rosa area of the park today. Snowy plover nests and chicks were all over the place, and the least terns are just starting to put down eggs. Seeing the island teeming with life, despite the ongoing road project, was wonderful! The plover chicks, little tiger-spotted cotton balls, ran around on black matchstick legs. Least terns dive bombed our heads. Plovers pretended they had broken wings so they could lure us away from eggs and young chicks.

At one point, we really confused a nesting least tern. Mark and I stopped to put some signs near nests that were only a few feet from the road. We scared the bird off the nest while posting signs in the area, and backed away to see how many nests may be in the area. The poor least tern spent twenty minutes dive-bombing the strange new predator near her incubating eggs. The threatening figure refused to move though, standing stoically like, well, like a post in the the sand :) We were in hysterics!

In all, it was a fantastic day. I'm so happy to be back at work. And for those of you who haven't been reading elsewhere, here's a picture of my newest love -- my as yet unnamed nephew "Figo".



And Figo with his tired and doting parents, Peter and Helene. We're all so happy to have him in the family!