It’s a quiet Sunday morning on Whitney Beach with hardly a cloud in the sky; the temperature is warm and the wind gentle.

If you want to experience South Florida’s soul in and around LBK, start in the early morning. Walk out to the beach and you’ll see a pale gray sky with a break of barely yellow light. Below it, look at the silhouette of a dove on a bare branch of a sea grape bush. As you approach hear the sound of its wings snap in the air like an unfurling canvas sail.

As my wife and I start the walk to Beer Can Island, my heart is noticeably beating and memories come flooding back. There’s the spot where I unearthed a large, almost undamaged lightning whelk that now sits on a bookshelf in our home in New York.

Did global warming aid this storm? Will it help to create others like it or worse? I don’t know but I have to believe so.

“Whit-Can Beach,” a strip that runs from Whitney Beach to Beer Can Island, was particularly rich with bird life at the end of February and the beginning of March. Here’s what it looked like on two of those days.

“Whit-Can Beach,” a strip that runs from Whitney Beach to Beer Can Island, was particularly rich with bird life at the end of February and the beginning of March. Here’s what it looked like on two of those days.

There are times while birding that I’ve really gotten caught up in the moment. This last happened on a cold, windy Saturday morning this January. While walking Whit-Can Beach, a strip that runs from Whitney Beach to Beer Can Island, I was swept away by a group of 1.4-ounce birds.

I am a dyed-in-the-blue New York Giants football fan, having been “baptized” into the faith in 1956. Last season any hopes I had for the Giants making a deep run into the playoffs ended in training camp when they lost a host of defensive players to injuries. It is my belief that strong defenses hold down high scoring offenses. With significant defensive injures, I wondered if the Giants would be more than a 9-7 team with little chance of making the postseason tournament.

It’s the last full day on LBK for my wife and me this winter. Hoping for some last-minute bird pictures, I take my camera. On Whitney Beach there are a large number of black specks on the horizon coalescing into a straight horizontal line. The bills and wingspan readily identify them as brown pelicans. These gawky looking birds are really agile fliers and show it, as 30 of them veer to the right in a synchronized movement. Nice.

It’s the last full day on LBK for my wife and me this winter. Hoping for some last-minute bird pictures, I take my camera. On Whitney Beach there are a large number of black specks on the horizon coalescing into a straight horizontal line. The bills and wingspan readily identify them as brown pelicans. These gawky looking birds are really agile fliers and show it, as 30 of them veer to the right in a synchronized movement. Nice.