Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Although the shelling has not produced a full bounty, the beauty, wildlife and activity on the Beach at Sunrise has been amazing. If you click on these pics to enlarge them, you will see dozens of birds flying along the water!

We were greeted first thing by a dolphin right up at the shore, slowly swimming along, obviously fishing and being very successful at it. We saw him as we crossed the bridge to the beach, and were not close enough to catch a pic of it.  There obviously was an abundance of fish, and food as there were birds EVERYWHERE and they were very busy!

For the first time, I saw seagulls grabbing up the live cockles, flying high and dropping them onto the beach below to break them and get the meat! How ingenious is that?! I saw this at least 3 times! I became a little nervous as the last time the shell landed just 50 feet or so away from where we were combing the beach.

This guy opted to fish for his food...

I spent so much time watching the sunrise and all the activities going on around me, that I didn't do much actual shelling at first.... Dolphins would slowly swim along, then suddenly turn and slap their tales and race under the water....playing with their food I could only assume!

Once again there were many live cockles and fighting conchs....

Banded tulip egg cases, were attached to this ark shell, a sign that spring is coming...

This sea urchin was protecting himself with these shells attached to his spines as he sunned on the beach...

The highlight of the day for me were these pelicans....they would attack the fish without any thought of how close to the beach or us he was getting.....notice how full his bill is as he scooped up his catch! We had a 'bird's eye view' of his breakfast! It was great!

He flew right up to us, so close I had to back off with my camera and was not sure I got the shot! Notice how huge his bill is under the water!!

 He almost looked embarrassed here as he swam on down the beach!

I thought this guy was interesting with his 'racing stripe' as he watched us leaving the beach, he even tilted his head to us as to say 'Good Morning'!  

We got home with a small handful of small shells, I will eventually have enough to clean and will post pics of them when I do. 

We headed on back, worked on our new project (another post) and then dressed in our green shirts, went to  an early St Patricks Day dinner with 2 other couples from our neighborhood to a local Irish restaurant.  What fun it was, we feel more and more at home here all the time! We have been wanting advice on the local restaurants and got all kinds of information of places to try.  

We also found out that there is a family of Owls that have joined our neighborhood, very close to our house.  The babies are now perched on a limb and are expected to fly any time now...so stay tuned for updates about them also.  I did get a couple of pretty good pics of one of them, as he peeked around a limb. The Talons of the other one is to his left, could never get a good pic of him because of the tree limbs, they are VERY high up and had to use my maximum zoom lens, so it's a little grainy.

Another day in paradise is done, and it has not disappointed....stay tuned for more tomorrow! I can't wait, and am enjoying sharing it!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

::Hugs::