3:00 snapshot #1487: Fort Myers Beach, Florida

[urbpan]

Here's my dad at Pete's Time Out, with an alert boat-tailed grackle over his shoulder.



The female grackles are a little smaller and brown. This one watches from the threshold of another restaurant.


Across the way a male has found a pay phone is a suitable lookout.


A short walk away is the nearby beach.


All the birds seem bolder here. This little sandpipers ran right among some swimmers to feed in the surf. In New England you wouldn't be able to get within 50 feet of them. I think these are western sandpipers Calidris mauri.


But this is rather too bold. This double-crested cormorant has an injured foot, and is perhaps too hurt or tired to fly away from these very very close human observers.


Enter Snowman. I am constantly amazed that tropical people bother to pretend about the winter holiday season. The country xmas music and the string lights wrapped around palm trees are everywhere, but I thought this was actually pretty cute. Those are palm frond arms.


"Hello kids! My face is made of the skeletons of marine animals!"