Turtle Patrol Volunteer
Occasionally I am asked by a PhD marine scientist to accompany him on a Turtle Patrol of a neighboring barrier island not accessible by car. We offload an ATV from a “landing craft” on the Bay side of the Island and drive across its two mile width to the beach.
Our main focus is to rescue turtle eggs during nesting season and return them to the National Seashore where they are incubated, hatched, and released. Our other duties include looking for stranded turtles and dolphins, collect data from deceased individuals, and count certain species of birds, usually plovers, but it varies by season.
With cooler water temperatures on warm days, we are prone to fog this time of year. Spotting birds also requires paying attention to whatever washes up on the beach, sometimes including boats, scientific buoys, and even a jet ski. This rather large tree stump washed up from river flooding. We also a saw an eight point White Tailed Deer. I have seen does on the islands before, but never a buck with one a rack of antlers.
We saw 2 different Peregrine Falcons perched on logs on the beach and even a coyote walking the edge of the dunes. We often see coyotes on our home island, but it was nice to see one in the wild.. We discovered the remains of a deceased Bottlenose Dolphin, taking measurements, extracting some teeth to be sent to marine mammal researchers, and geolocating the remains for them.
The island ends 20 miles to the north and is separated from the next island by a natural cut, which is periodically opened by storms as Hurricane Harvey did in 2017. At this separation, we saw some Stilts....
...and a flock of over 200 Avocets. I have never seen so many before.
On the return trip we found the recent kill by one of the Peregrine Falcons, a tern. The remains were being picked over by the Crested Cara Cara or Mexican Eagle, which is a known scavenger.
It was a great day at the beach, the weather was nice and we enjoyed observing wildlife without encountering another human.
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