Young royal terns and sandwich terns were yelling at the parents to get them fish.
Ghost crab on the beach.
Sandwich terns showing off.
Young black bellied plovers. I’m not sure if they were fighting or playing.
Ibis looking for snacks.
A hawk flies by on the beach.
A dolphin goes by out in the gulf.
The last of my Sanibel Island vacation pictures.
The view of the pool area near our room.
The view from our room.
The view from my beach chair.
The view from the front door.
The view of the critters that come out at night. We would see them coming back from dinner each night. I’ve never seen lizards this color before, especially with glowing red eyes.
Another view from my beach chair.
All views at our hotel, Casa Ybel, in Sanibel Island.
A few more pictures from our vacation in Sanibel Island in southeast Florida. All were taken from my beach chair, which was steps away from our condo. We went in late September and it was perfect. Sunny skies and very few tourists. We had most of the beach to ourselves.
Close up of a juvenile reddish egret. He was hanging around the fisherman on the beach.
Laughing gulls on the beach. One screaming and one hopping around on one foot.
Snowy egrets around the pier.
There’s always an osprey nest near the water. It’s a little early for mating so she must have been just hanging around.
A few of the birds at the Lighthouse beach on Sanibel Island.
Linking to Saturday’s Critters
All of the above were taken at Lighthouse Beach at the end of Sanibel Island. There’s a small beach that wraps around the lighthouse and it was full of large jellyfish that were stranded on shore. We had heard there a lot of them in the water in the area but we did not see any at the beach or in the water at our hotel. You could not go up in the lighthouse but could walk around the grounds.
Sanibel Island has a reputation for having a lot of shells on the beach. People come to visit to go shell hunting. We must have been there during a down time because all of the beach looked like the above. Mostly small broken shells. I guess all of the good ones get taken during the summer or you have to be there very early in the morning right after a storm. I did manage to find a few small ones though. The sanderlings and black bellied plovers spent a lot of time digging through the shells for tiny critters to eat.
The willet wants to know who left their shoes on the beach. I told him they weren’t mine. I don’t think he believed me.
All of the above were taken from my beach chair.
On vacation in Sanibel Island. On our first night I walked out of our room and walked the 20 feet to the beach. The above was the view.
One day before lunch, we were watching a storm roll in. This was the only rain we saw during our 5 day stay, way off in the gulf.
Moon going down one morning.
An early walk on the beach produced the above.
On our last night, we had dinner at a restaurant near a marina and watched the sun go down. It was a beautiful drive back to our hotel.
We did a staycation in late September and drove 2 hours south of Tampa and stayed right on the beach in Sanibel Island. Tourist season was over and it was very calm and quiet. It was nice just to relax and hang out on the beach for several days. I took tons of pictures (I can only relax so much) so I’ll be boring you with my “What I did on my summer vacation” pictures coming up. I did bring my Nikon camera and several lenses but all of the above were taken with my Iphone.