The End of 2020

We ended the year quietly. We did go out for some hikes, mostly birding. We added no new birds but enjoyed ourselves anyway. I ended the year with 72 bird species. That's my lowest in quite a while, but considering we never left the state, I'm OK with that. We did add a number of lifers on the year, so that's good. Here's a Cardinal munching, just for shits n' giggles.

We visited the dens in the last week of the year but despite some weak sun, it was too cold for any snakes to have been poking out.

We got a call to transport some turtles on December 20th. We took 3 Kemps-Ridleys to the rehab aquarium.

The lower guy in the second picture we called Flappy because he kept flapping his flippers and covering himself up with the towel. VERY lively. December 20th is pretty late for Kemps to come in alive so these are very welcome survivors.

As of December 26th, this is what the numbers looked like. HUGE year.

As you can see, the live/ dead ratio is superb this year. The crew is doing an amazing job, especially considering the restrictions due to Covid.

We got asked to walk a night patrol on December 27th but it was called off that day due to decreasing winds and an overall slow turtle day. But they called back and asked if we could to the 29th for an 11:21 PM high tide and I said I'd do it. Andrea couldn't as she had work in the morning, so I did it alone.

No turtles and obviously no animals to see but it was a beautiful (if cold... it was 28° plus wind) night and the full moon was shining enough that I had a shadow and could see pretty well even when my headlamp was off. I scared up a few flocks of sleeping shorebirds, likely Sanderlings, but obviously, got no photos.

I saw a lot of this:

Here's what the Half-Way Rock area looked like at about 12:30 AM:

A 1:30 AM dune break.

So that is the end of my year. And what a weird one it was. For all of us.