Caddying for a curator
MICHAEL GIVANT
Contributing Columnist
givant@lbknews.com
My wife and I are out for our morning walk, which takes us from Whitney Beach to Beer Can Island. Early morning sun illuminates the sand as tidal ridges in the cold water of the Gulf of Mexico massage our feet. With our senses fresh we search the tidal line of broken shells for the sand dollars that my wife so admires. She has her own nomenclature for broken sand dollars, calling them 50-cents, 60-cents or what amount their partial size suggests. She’s taken a large whole one from the water, which was buried up to its middle, with just its center and slits showing. It’s a prize about which she’s very happy. Being her assistant and caddy, I’m amazed how she spots these things. Being a birder, I’m used to looking up rather than down.
On Beer Can Island there’s a raptor high in a ravaged ash colored tree. Minutes before, this osprey had flown over the lagoon, circled the gulf with the dull white and brown of its under wings showing and landed. Rays of sunlight squeeze over the treetops as I walk closer to the “fish-hawk” that I call Bobby McGee.
Me, Bobby McGee and the birds
I’ve watched it alone out here many times and have dubbed it so after a Janis Joplin song of the same name. This time Bobby flies. I have the osprey in my binoculars all the way as it swoops almost to the sand and takes a swipe at a stick with his feet. With shafts of light illuminating it and the tall brown grasses just ahead the osprey rises. The raptor’s manacled claws are the last I see of it as the bird disappears into tomorrow.
Later a group of ten red knots, sandpipers that are plumper and larger than the sanderlings, are on the shelf also feeding. On their breasts are the faint outlines of red, where a summer rust color was before it changed into a duller winter plumage. Two of them are tagged with light green bands on their legs and all are ravenously feeding. Nearby the sanderlings have returned, their number now increased to fourteen. The red knots fly a short distance over the water their backs slightly bent, heads down, feet hanging and start to feed in a new spot. Nearby a huge mass of gulls and terns making loud ratchety sounds flyoff.
Crab walk
My wife goes home with her morning’s sea offerings and I go back to Beer Can. On the shore of a tidal lagoon, next to the Longboat Pass Bridge are approximately fifty sand fiddler crabs. At adjacent spots there are two interesting reddish masses, more fiddler crabs, perhaps five to six hundred of them. These 11⁄4-inch crustaceans are called fiddler crabs because the males have a very large pincer, practically the length of their bodies, which resembles a fiddle. When a smaller claw brings food to the crab’s mouth it appears to be playing the larger pincer as if it were a fiddle. I stand still because they retreat to the grass when I walk toward them. They return when I stop walking. Many color, similar to people who have been in the sun day after day. Their sides are lighter but their shell tops are dark and have delicate black lines, which divided them into sections like those on a painted turtle.
Enthralled by nature
Despite the menacing looking limb and their otherworldly appearance, the fiddler crabs seem to be gentle creatures that want the sun. All around them are bits of tiny round sand balls, possibly a result of sifting for what is edible. Looking around, I notice that the bridge is up. I’ve been so enthralled by these creatures that I haven’t heard the siren go off which stops traffic on it. I start to walk gingerly toward them so as not to scare them but what they need to fear isn’t me. A solitary sandpiper that has been in the grass comes out into a mass of crabs and plucks one up in its bill. Many of the crabs scatter. The sandpiper walks away quickly with its tail twitching. The captured crab is struggling and the sandpiper drops it in the water several times. I don’t know if the sandpiper downed it but the bird having appeared to swallow the crab stops, looks around and flies over the water.
When I get home I’m about to tell my wife about the attack on the crabs when I see that she is rinsing her sand dollar collection and arranging it with other interesting shells on decorative trays. It’s an elegant artistic, gallery-like display. Impressive. I didn’t realize that I was caddying for a curator.
