Hi Everyone!

I hope that you all had a nice 4th of July.  It was much quieter here with the high gas prices than it has been in the past.  It's hard to believe that the summer is nearly half over.  Our weather has been fantastic -- nice breezes every day, rain in the afternoon or evening and warm water and temps.

The beach has been pretty busy even during the week with a lot of foreign visitors.  Sand dollars are beginning to wash up on the beach near Wiggins Pass.  I found a few shark's teeth last week but none since.

Someone completely cleaned out the shells in our giveaway box so I had to redouble my efforts to find some nice shells to put in the box.

While most of the birds have migrated from our area we still have 1 Osprey visiting the beach and we had a sick Gannet that we captured to take to the Conservancy.  Unfortunately, they had to euthanize the bird since it had a break in its wrist.  We still see Laughing Gulls, Snowy Egrets, Ruddy Turnstones, Ibises and Fish Crows every day.

We had a pelican that had a kite line wrapped around its body and we were able to remove the line and the pelican flew off.  There are newly passed regulations prohibiting the feeding of fish scraps to pelicans.  In fact, some marinas and parks are removing fish cleaning stations as an added measure to discourage pelicans from hanging around for scraps.

We have 56 loggerhead turtle nests and they will begin to hatch out soon.  Hopefully, we will continue to get more nests.

The algae in the newly refurbished butterfly pond continues to flourish but the water is clear.  We tried putting 25 mollies into the pond to eat the algae but all but 2 had disappeared by the next morning!  Bobbe Hickman added two algae eaters (see attached picture) to the pond and one of them ended up in the skimmer box the first day but we assume that they are both still alive and eating algae.

 In the news today there is talk of raising the entry fee into Barefoot Beach to $8 from the current $6 fee.  The yearly fee of $50 would remain the same.

I am very sorry to report that another older gopher tortoise was run over in the first parking lot yesterday.  Evidently it was raining quite hard and a woman backed out of a parking space and ran over the tortoise.  Ranger Roger buried it.  A new burrow was dug by a gopher tortoise at Wiggins Pass (see attached picture). 

Every day for the past few days we have seen a manatee that travels down the gulf about 2:30 p.m., following the beach and then hangs around the beach at Wiggins Pass.  Today we told a visitor who was in the water that a manatee was 5' away from him that he hadn't noticed!  Some fishermen said that there were 5-6 manatees last week at Wiggins Pass.

For awhile I saw Armadillos every day in the preserve and then I didn't see any for 9 months or more.  Well, at least one of them is back.  I haven't seen it but it has really done a job tearing up a section of the Butterfly garden.  There must be a lot of tasty bugs in there.

 You never know what you might see when you go to Barefoot Beach but it is always a great learning experience.

 Enjoy your summer,