Yesterday morning, a low tide had doubled the width of the beach on Longboat Key. Broad sandflats spread toward the calm Gulf, cut by braided channels of seawater and dappled with temporary pools. The latter, adorned by the tracks of marine snails, harbored schools of fry, starfish and a host of crustaceans.
A hundred or more brown pelicans rested on the calm waters of the Gulf; each would eventually rise into the air and then plunge toward another school of fish. Nearby, sandwich and royal terns circled above the surface in large, noisy flocks, diving in sequence to snare a fingerling. Cormorants and ospreys also moved in to share the bounty and, beyond the outermost sandbar, a pod of dolphins rejoiced in the morning feast, diving for fish or twisting into the air.
On the beach, laughing gulls, great blue herons, snowy egrets, willets and white ibis stalked the shallow pools while short-billed dowitchers, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones, black-bellied plovers and red knots hunted across the sandflats. It was a scene of plenty on a mild, sunny morning in South Florida.
