Moments at the season’s end

MICHAEL GIVANT
Contributing Columnist
givant@lbknews.com

Ten days before my wife and I are going to leave LBK for the season, I start storing moments from the winter in my mind’s eye like a squirrel stores nuts.

On a sunny cloudless day at Robinson Preserve in Bradenton, green trees are juxtaposed with white sand that blazes in the sun. The sand looks bone dry, but looks can be deceiving. In a pond is an immature white ibis. The predominantly brown bird jumps/flies a short distance between two sand bars.

The ibis puts its very long, down-curved, buoy-colored bill into the sand and removing it very fast holds a medium-sized crab covered with sand. The ibis plunges the crab into the water where it momentarily loses the crustacean but comes up with it now free of sand. In less than the blink of an eye, the ibis swallows its meal. Walking across the sand purposefully, the ibis probes it at a 45-degree angle. This young bird is a capable hunter.

A week later, under a cloudy sky on Whitney Beach, I’m following a brown and gray immature ring-billed gull whose soft colors are subtle and whose walk is uneven. The bird walks along an area of wet sand on which there are sloped, dark lines made by the tide. The lines intrigue me, but I move on.

At the other end of the beach an older couple is collecting shells. The man has excavated a large whelk from a sand embankment created by the tide. He uses a wood and plastic beach shovel, repeatedly throwing water on the sand as an archeologist might. He unearths what I think is a lightning whelk in excellent condition and a better specimen than the two that I’ve dug out on this beach. I’ve watched dozens of people stare at the sand walking around picking up small shells, but I’ve never seen one using a shovel to painstakingly claim something this size from a sand embankment. I admire his effort and the results.

The next day there are about 100 black skimmers on the beach. Skimmers are striking birds with long black bodies, short red legs and red/black long bills whose lower mandible is longer than the upper, because they fly just above the water using it to skim for fish. On the beach however they just hang out. Looking at them head on, it appears as if they are eyeless. Their eyes however are slits that are hidden in the black ”hoods” that end at white, which cover the lower part of their faces. The most skittish birds on the beach, they fly when people come too close or apparently for no reason at all. They slowly circle low over the water like a living canopy in the blue sky. Standing beneath them for the last time this winter, I realize I’ve forgotten just how colorful they are and how alive I feel looking at them while they circle.

Further along on a sand embankment are a large group of royal terns with some sandwich terns mixed in. It isn’t the large royals with the long orange bills in which I’m interested. It’s the smaller sandwich terns whose predominant feature is the yellow tip at the end of their long straight black bills. I delight in looking at those elegant bills. There are two sandwiches standing side by side. I stare at one first with the naked eye, then with binoculars and mutter “yes.” Here’s why.

A few years ago on this beach in March I came along at what I thought might have been the end of a sandwich tern mating. It seemed that one of the terns had a rosy hued white breast. Since then I’ve seen that rosy hue twice more each time in bright sun. Was the rosy hue an indicator of the birds’ readiness to breed? Was it the effect of bright sunlight?

Now under a cloudy sky with the naked eye, I can clearly see that rosy hue on the bird’s neck and breast. Now I strongly believe that it has to do with the mating season. The sandwich tern opens its mouth as if yawning, and I can see dark red and a throat that is wide like a little well. I’ve never before looked into the open mouth of a sandwich tern.

Sitting on the embankment to make some notes, a nearby laughing gull, well into its breeding plumage, opens its bill showing a dark red mouth and “awks” loud and long to the heavens. It finally lowers its head giving a final short “awk” and walks but a few feet from me. I like the gull’s company.

In late the afternoon the day before we leave, my wife and I go to the beach to literally say goodbye to the place we’ve walked almost every morning this winter. The sky is cloudless, the tide low and only a few birds are around. Afterward while hosing the sand off our feet I notice a warbler. Getting binoculars on it, the striking bright yellow face and black hood practically jump out at me. This isn’t any familiar warbler. It’s more like an exotic tropical bird. My wife and I both get good looks at it.

Getting home I look at an old field guide, and the bird’s likeness practically jumps off the page. It’s a hooded warbler. Never having seen one before, I call a birder friend in New York. I carefully describe the bird without mentioning a name. “Hooded warbler,” he replies. It’s not a Gulf Coast bird but a migrating one that has probably stopped off on the way from its wintering grounds, which are mainly in Central America. I don’t know its destination, but this little bird is the most colorful memory this snowbird stored before we left for home the next morning.