Day 6 at the Ocean

 Thursday 8/19/2021

Our friends headed home, so Ed and I went to get him a drive-through Covid test. (Several people in his church had come down with it) It took a short forever--which was probably only about 45 minutes. I walked across the parking lot to Walmart and got some sausage, chips and bananas, and then I walked the dogs in the grass around the shopping strip with the med-lab. It was hot and very painfully sunny, so after I stepped in fire ants unseen, I gave up and took them back in the car.

Then we took a long drive to the Padre Island National Seashore visitor center, which appeared to be closed although there were a number of cars in the parking lot. I went inside and shoved on the door to the park store and it didn't budge, but I didn't ask anyone if they knew. The park office was definitely closed.

Then we took a long, long drive down the beach.  "Little Shell Beach" was reported to be at the 12-mile point, and Big Shell Beach at the 24. But we didn't make it that far. At about 15 miles the sand started getting squishy and we weren't feeling comfortable about going farther.  We got out of the Jeep several times and looked for shells, but none were to be found. I found out later than (a) the Gulf Coast only has one low tide a lunar day, and (b) the tide was near high and had been going out all the time we were there.

All told we saw maybe 15 or 20 cars on the beach, total. Lovely, lovely deserted beach. I could live there if it weren't for all the sand.

On the way back I saw Long-Billed Curlew--three of them!  .

 Also least tern.  The unidentified bird hanging with the least tern was probably just a laughing gull, the most common gull there. We also saw thee Caracara.

In the evening I went for a walk, and just as it was getting two dark to see, Black Skimmer was hitting the shore, back and forth, skimming the surface of the water. You could barely see, but from the behavior and general size and shape it was a sure thing.
Sunset over sand dunes---