A Least Tern parent feeding its chick near St. Augustine, Florida.
Picture credit: Craig O’Neal
For this upcoming Memorial Day weekend holiday, Florida Audubon is advising and warning the public to be aware of the plethora of bird life that will be on our many Beaches.
This weekend kicks off the Summer Beach Season here and there will be thousands of people and birds, out on our lovely, luscious and most inviting warm sandy beaches.
Did I mention that Dr. Beach chose four of our Florida Beaches for his top ten list for 2014:
But please do be advised, many of our beautiful Beaches are already occupied with many of Florida’s newest wildlife citizens.
On any given beach right now, you will find a delightful array of nests and/or baby birds, eager to make their first journey.
Any disturbance right now that causes a mother to abandon her nest, could prove fatal to her chicks or eggs.
Audubon has just sent out an email press release, asking each of us to:
“Keep an eye out for Florida’s original “beach babies.”
The young and the newborns that will be found all over Florida’s beaches right now, are exceptionally vulnerable to any and all risks that they may encounter like: children, pets, cars and other!
This weekend would be a perfect opportunity to teach your little ones about our wonderful Florida wildlife and how and why, we must take great precautions around them.
So, on this prequel to a wonderful new summer in the Sunshine State this weekend, let us all be aware that we must share the Beaches with these brand new babies to assure that they will grow up and come back next year, to make even more “Beach Babies!”
Places to learn more:
Audubon Asks You to Protect Coastal Birds this Memorial Day Weekend
Bird nesting season, beach season collide
Watch out for beach-nesting birds
Walking with the Alligators 
Outstanding photo! And it’s always nice to be reminded that there is more wildlife on the beach than just dogs. Thanks for the reminder, Gator Woman.
Thank you Jet, you are always so kind and supportive~
This is such an important message, Gator Woman! I hope beach visors will heed your words.
If only…….
I love beach babies and hope to see some sea turtles babies this year.
They say that it is already a very good year, so you may do just that. Come on down! We were just up in Flagler yesterday. It was superb~
Thank you for reminding people that wildlife is everywhere.
At least here in Florida they are just about everywhere, so we must take care to keep an eye out for them. Thank you!
Wonderful blog. The baby in the photo is so sweet. Thank you for the smile on my face. Hugs, Barbara
That makes me supremely happy Barbara~
Thank you!
There is a tiny island off of NC’s Cedar Island and Hog Island called Harbor Island. In summer my family stayed on Cedar Island and we took our skiff over to Harbor Island to watch the baby birds hatch. There were no people there, only birds, and to see and listen to the chicks hatch was quite an event. We could walk among the nests and birds and there seemed to be no fear. I have some old photos but you can barely tell what is nest or grass. What a lovely memory your image provoked!
Thank you so much for sharing that here, perhaps there will be others who may have similar stories to recall.~
These kinds of sweet memories last forever.