Longboat Key is a long, narrow barrier island off the west coast of Florida, stretching between Anna Marie Island, off Bradenton, and Lido Key, off Sarasota. Angled NW to SE, its Gulf of Mexico side is lined with beaches while its eastern edge, along Sarasota Bay, is a mosaic of tidal marshes, mudflats, mangrove islands and residential developments; the latter are generally protected by seawalls and many are accessed by boat channels from the Bay.
The northwest tip of Longboat Key, known as Greer's Beach, is subject to regular sculpting by tropical storms and wave action. As a result, it often harbors a mix of tidal shallows and sand spits and has defied attempts to permanently restore its condition. While humans may prefer a wide, gently sloping beach for sun-bathing, beach games, fishing and shelling, the fickle nature of this shore appeals to marine birds, many of which nest and roost along this coast and find off-shore fishing to be productive, the result of changing and upwelling currents along and near the Longboat Inlet channel.
This morning, large, mixed flocks of gulls, terns and shorebirds gathered along the beach; these included laughing gulls, Forster's, royal, Sandwich and least terns, black skimmers and a host of shorebirds, including willets, sanderlings, black-bellied plovers, red knots, ruddy turnstones and piping plovers. Brown pelicans, double crested cormorants, ospreys and northern gannets fed offshore and, to my delight, a large flock of black scoters moved up the coast. Great blue herons, yellow-crowned night herons and white ibis are also common in this area. For a naturalist, this shifting beach is among the most interesting sites on Longboat Key.
