When we went to St. Pete Beach, FL to visit my great grandpa we also went to visit some friends of my mom’s, Dora and her husband Michael and Celeste her sister. They were staying at a hotel on the beach a few blocks away from my grandpa’s house. We went down to the beach to see the sunset and also to see these really cook birds, Black Skimmers, nesting on the beach. They don’t make nests like other birds, they just dig a hole in the sand and lay their eggs.
They are called Skimmers because they skim the surface of the water to catch small fish.Their bill is like a pelican where the bottom is larger than the top. The baby birds just eat the whole fish they are brought from their parents, they don’t eat regurgitated food. It was pretty cool to see these little tiny baby birds eat a whole big fish.
The area was roped off so that people would not disturb them. But if you got too close they would fly at you to scare you away from their babies.
The white table looking things were for the babies to be able to get out of the sun if they got too hot. When a seagull would fly over the area the babies would lay down flat and spread out their wings and since they are the same color as the sand I guess they think they can’t be seen easily. I found a shell from one of the hatched babies. It was speckled with black spots.
Here are some videos of the nesting community. They were noisy!
And here is one of the adult Skimmer skimming the water for food.
dogs on my mind 