According to my handy beach book, this is a skate egg case, or "Mermaid's Purse".  Skates (which look like rays) are related to sharks.

I also saw these little amber "beads" along the beach this evening.  They are actually the tiny air bladders of algae, or seaweed.

And this is a sponge called "Dead-man's fingers".

Yesterday it rained really hard all morning.  Then, in the afternoon, the sun came out.

There were two Black Skimmers down at our end of the beach...

I also saw a tiny Hermit Crab in an auger shell.

Very windy today, and a very rough sea.

A Ring-Billed Gull had found a bit of apple or something on the beach.  But a Fish Crow was also eager to partake.

Here's a video showing how the crow eventually stole a bit of the gull's treat.  It's too bad it's so windy; you can't hear anything but the wind blowing.

Well, as promised, this morning I walked down the beach to find out where the Black Skimmers are nesting.  Turns out they are behind the Bon Aire motel in St. Pete Beach, just where they were last year.  The nesting area hasn't been cordoned off yet.

Royal Terns in foreground, Black Skimmer nesting area in background...

Black skimmers are comical-looking birds, with long lop-sided bills, long ungainly-looking bodies and short little legs.  You can barely see their eyes, in the dark part of their head.

But if you look at a Skimmer in flight, you can see that the body is not really that long--it is only the very long wings that make it look that way...

These two Skimmers are evaluating the nesting possibilities of this particular area...

A Black Skimmer with some Willets

A lovely evening at the beach.

I saw a little striped Hermit Crab...

... and a Black-bellied Plover.

Oh, and the Black Skimmers are back!  Over the weekend I'm going to walk down the beach and see where they're nesting this year...

And maybe I can get a better picture...

I saw two unusual birds on the beach today.  One was an American Oystercatcher, which I have never seen on Pass-a-Grille Beach before.

Lovely red eyeliner...

The other was a pigeon, which I have certainly seen almost everywhere else but at the beach.

 I am now revising this post about the three Royal Terns I saw on the beach, one with a fish.  I had thought it was a parent with its young.  But I have been seeing some Laughing Gulls mating, and it occurred to me that maybe it's too early for young birds, but the right time for courtship.  An online search revealed that the male tern will present a fish to the female.  In that case, it is possible the other two terns are females, and the male is trying to get one of them interested in his fish.

He would fly away, circling around, but always coming back to the other two terns.  He did this several times, not trying to eat the fish, just showing it off.

Today I found a live Lightning Whelk on the beach, partially buried in the sand.  I thought it was part of an empty shell, and picked it up, but it was not empty.  I have never found a live whelk before.

I put the snail down and he started to work his way down into the sand again. Here is a video:

When I came by later, he was mostly covered up again.

The Lightning Whelk's egg mass looks like this:

 

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  The sun was warm, the water was calm and clear.

There were little silver fish jumping out of the water.

Further down the beach, I saw a couple who had brought their little pet with them to the beach.  Dogs are not really allowed on the beach, but you do sometimes see people with their dogs, usually in the evening, though not usually in a cage.

But upon closer inspection, I realized this was not a puppy.

It was a bunny.

I don't think it was a happy bunny, because the day was quite warm and it had lots of lovely thick fur.  But there you go.  You never know what you are going to see on the beach...

I have been trying to identify the different birds I'm seeing on Pass-a-Grille Beach.  A most useful book for this purpose has been Florida's Living Beaches: A Guide for the Curious Beachcomber (that's me!), by Blair and Dawn Witherington.  It has great pictures and lots of information.

So, the birds I'm sure about so far:

The Brown Pelican, he's easy.

The Willet

Willet Wing Detail

Then there's the Willet, a type of sandpiper.  He has greyish-brown feathers on top, a long brown bill and long legs.  A very plain-looking bird (except when he takes flight--then you can see he has very striking black and white wing-tips).  This is the bird I see most often when I go to the beach.

A Ring-billed Gull

Ring-billed Gull close-up

I've also finally figured out the gulls.  The Ring-Billed Gull has a black stripe on his yellow bill, and yellow legs.

The Laughing Gull has a black head and black legs.

Two Laughing Gulls

The juvenile Herring Gull is a big bird, with mottled brown feathers.  You can tell he's a juvenile because of the brown feathers.  When he matures he will be white and gray like other gulls.

A juvenile Herring Gull

So, now I'm trying to learn about Terns.  The Terns are the birds you see hovering in the air over the surf, which will suddenly dive straight down into the water to catch a fish.  When they come out of the water and fly away, they give a little shake to dry off, just like a dog!

I recently took a picture of several Terns standing in a group on the beach, and it helped a lot in my effort to tell them apart.  The Forster's Tern, on the far left, has orange legs and a dark bill.  The Sandwich Tern (the three birds in the middle of the group) has black legs and a black bill with a yellow tip (from dipping his bill in the mustard while making his sandwich?  No, actually the name relates to the Sandwich Islands).  The Royal Tern is the biggest, on the far right, with dark legs and an orange bill.

Three kinds of Tern: Forster's Tern, Sandwich Tern, and Royal Tern

Sandwich bill close-up

Lately low tide has been leaving piles of shells and "shell hash" here and there along the beach, an irresistible attraction to any serious shell collector.  If I were still collecting shells I would have a hard time walking past this conglomeration of shells without stopping to take a look.  As it is, I just paused long enought to take a picture:

Shell hash is when the shells have been broken into lots of little pieces: