It's Mom Season on the Key!

Threatened Least Terns are nesting on the key! They lay their eggs, about the size of a robin's egg, wide open on the beaches. There has been an increase with 71 "nests" from JB to the Perdido Pass, but it takes three weeks of a mom's diligence in the blazing sun or pounding storms just for them to hatch. I found this one a few hours after the egg had been laid and if she wasn't swooping off to chase off other terns, people, gulls and sandpipers, her head was in constant motion watching for predators. The reason so much of the beaches on the key and Johnson Beach are roped off this time of year is to protect these nearly invisible eggs. You all have often heard me say that a lot of animals are better at being members of their species than some people are at being human. Here's one: