Monday, May 31, 2010

The widening beach



The western end of the beach which seasonally erodes quite a bit in winter is rebuilding itself. It's a beautiful wide stretch of sugar white sand. Typically there is little foot traffic in this area of my patrol, but as you can see in this photo several people checked it out over the Memorial Day Weekend.

4 comments:

Pat Harris said...

Hi DJ,
When I lived in P'cola, vehicles were not allowed on the beach. When did this change? I can't get used to seeing the tracks in the sand. Thank you again for all your wonderful pictures. I do plan on someday getting back to the beach. Tennesse is nice, but the beach is better! Blessings, Pat.

Barrier Island Girl said...

Pat,

Not to worry. Those tracks are the results of the Mules and ATVs used by the Park service to patrol for sea turtles and shore birds at this time of year.

When we patrol for sea turtles in the morning, our first pass is to ride as low as possible next to the water, looking for tracks. On the return we ride high in case we missed something.

The bio-techs also patrol, doing surveys for the endangered bird species such as Least Terns at this time of year. Can you imagine trying to count every nesting bird on this island???? I can't, but that's what they try to do...including every tiny egg in each nest.

At any rate, those tracks are morning/evening/daily accumulation of Park folks trying to protect the marine & wildlife.

DJ

Simple Daisy said...

What a beautiful photo!

Pat Harris said...

Thank you DJ for the explanation. I had visions of beachgoers racing on the sand. Glad it isn't so. I appreciate your pictures so much. Whatever happened with the Great Heron? When in P'cola, I had a pond and used to feed the fish in it. They would follow me as I walked the edge of the water. One day a Heron stood on the edge picking out the fish congregated there waiting for food. I had to stop that!!