A Little Bunche of Life

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::