Team Cheri decided to head to the beach in Fort Myers today, Bunche Beach. It's always an adventure in the mud flats, and Cheri, being a Bird Nerd, can usually find lots of birds...I always learn so much when going Bird Nerding with her! We started out by seeing this beautiful Brittle Star....
Not really quite sure why it's called that because as you can see it's anything BUT Brittle! But they are very cool and such a pleasure to see it alive and well! We also saw a few live Kings Crowns....
There were also lots of these 'Jelly Bubbles'....don't know what they are or what they are called, but they were all over the place, in and out of the tidal pools....
they are connected to the mud....and appear to 'inflate' when submerged in the water....weird, but interesting!
Here's a video of one with a couple Live Marginellas....Marginellas are one of my favorite shells....so tiny, but so beautiful!
There were even some fiddler crabs out there fiddling!!! I love these guys.....
The small disc shaped things on these EMPTY Kings Crown are actually Egg casings.....so glad to see these, its so important for them to grow and multiply, so I opted to leave this one so these guys could grow....
This crown had a very shy Hermit crab in it....
Cheri got to do lots of Bird Nerding....she knows so much about these birds.... This guy is actually a 'White Morph Reddish Egret'
Cheri says he has a baby out here, is rare because of his unusual coloring, and is actually rigged with a satellite tracking device so 'they' can keep track of him... She spent a lot of time looking through the amazing lens on her camera, looking for leg tags and flags on migratory birds...
She actually found her first 'Nanotagged' plover....she was very excited! Being Nanotagged means that they are picked up by local towers and their migration path can be tracked. She thinks this plover is actually from Virginia Tech....small world! We are from Virginia and our daughter undergrad and Vet School training was there and our Son in law is currently in their PHD program. Amazing stuff, huh?! We did find several treasures to carry home....Sunray Venus pairs...
It's always been interesting to me that they seem sensitive to heat...most of this was buried in the mud, but you see the "pinkish" color, it was in the sun...
you may remember that at the very bottom of a past post here....I showed the color change when you boil them.... We found a few Rose Tellins....
Cheri found a single Angel Wing....
and we each found several empty Kings crowns...
It's always an adventure at Bunche.....
if you look closely, you will see the causeway bridge to Sanibel, so it's so close, and so different from the Sanibel beaches! Stay tuned for the next adventure! ::Shelllady Hugs::
"Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!"~Henry Frankenstein(1931) Greetings from sunny Ft. Myers! Hubby and I arrived this afternoon with our daughter Jess in tow, her Hubby Brad will fly in tomorrow for a few days! We will be staying until next Sunday and I am excited to have them both here with us in our Ft. Myers home....they have seen it but never stayed here with us! After a quick trip to the grocery store, and some Publix fried chicken for dinner, Jess and I headed out to Bunche Beach for a couple of hours before dark, she had never been there and we were pleased to see that there was a lot of the beach uncovered even though low tide isn't until nearly midnight tonight. There was so much activity on the mud flats, tiny baby horseshoe crabs....
...Fiddler crabs...dozens of them!
Live Kings Crowns...
Sunray Venus...both sides (Not live) He came home with us!
Here are a couple of King's Crowns being romantic! The small disc like pieces in the center of this picture are the eggs!
This is obviously some sort of egg basket, I call it a wubba bubba, I have no idea what kind of eggs these are!
Live Kings Crown
A tiny tropical fish of some sort, he looked like he should be in an aquarium!
Live Kings Crown 'walking' along the beach, notice his body or 'foot' on the sand underneath.
A baby horseshoe crab
Live baby horseshoe belly
A hermit crab in a bright blue auger
This is the first time I have ever seen Rosette Spoonbills in real life, and they are beautiful! Notice the gorgeous colors!
I got a little too close so they just moved on out!
A live Marginella, This little guy is less than a half inch long!
A live starfish (sea star) , see his 'feet'?
We were 'chased' out after only an hour by an incoming thunderstorm, can you imagine how many pics we would have taken if we had been there for two hours? We each found a Kings Crown shell that wasn't occupied, but not many more shells, but that's okay, we had such a great time, you can bet you will hear more about Bunche Beach this week!!
