3:00 snapshot #1489

A quick snapshot before lunch, then off to Sanibel and Captiva!
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Ding Darling

The JN "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge is a protected estuary on the barrier island of Sanibel on the gulf coast of south Florida. It's something of a birder's mecca, with wide mud flats allowing for amazing visibility, and a resource-rich habitat attracting a variety of birds, including tropical migrants. It is named for the man who did much of the work to get the land protected.

Ding Darling was an editorial cartoonist and conservationist. He was often very critical of the policies of then president Franklin D Roosevelt in his cartoons. FDR was aware of him, and eventually asked him to be the first head of the agency that became the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Often on this visit to Southwest Florida I was struck by how hard the conservation fight seemed to be here. And yet the beauty and biodiversity are so omnipresent you would expect people would be clamoring to protect it. It's a shame the state wasn't discovered by westerners 500 years later than it was.

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3:00 snapshot #1490: Sanibel beach, etc.

The beaches at Sanibel and nearby Fort Myers Beach, I noticed, are composed mostly of the surf-ground skeletons of bivalve mollusks. It ranges from unbelievably fine, to entire shells.

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Captiva beach, the end of the wheel of the year, the sea monster.

As I said earlier, we stayed at the Tween Waters Inn, in a room on the top floor of the building behind my dad in this picture. We were told that since it's "cold," that the manatees have moved away from the ocean into warmer inland waters.
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