Pensacola Beach Blogger

Pensacola Beach has a different shape this fall, after several weeks of the Gulf re-claiming its sand, or, at least shifting it around. Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike seemed to have left their mark on our beautiful beaches. There are four, seven, and even some ten-foot drops on the east side of the island:

I’m curious to see what the future holds. Will the SRIA somehow bring sand in, or reshape the beach? Will the beaches take their normal, flat shape again over time? Leave a comment if you have any input on this:

The walkway near my home is officially closed now, due to the big drop off at the end of it:

This morning I was up early enough to catch the sunrise on Pensacola Beach. In fact I was up before the sunrise:

At 6:30am this morning, you can still see the moon at the top of this picture.  It was a very peaceful time to be out on the beach, but the sand was kind of chilly. The Gulf, however, was very warm. It felt great to walk on the warm sand down by the water.

Here comes the sun:

There were plenty of pelicans out, ready to “obstruct” my shot:

Sun is up. Time to head back and make some coffee!

If you’ve spent any time at all on Pensacola Beach (especially near dusk), you’ve seen the crabs! But have you ever tried catching one? Check out the crab we pulled up in a net:

If you hold them from the back, they can’t pinch you:

Of course, soon after we caught this guy, we let him go:

Hurricane Ike is causing some high tides and flooding over in my neighborhood on Pensacola Beach, the sound-side in particular. I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunrise:

But water rushing down the street is never a good sign:

Looks like the Gulf is coming over the dunes! Not a good thing for our expected turtle hatchlings on Pensacola Beach.

In fact, I found this screen covering used to keep crabs out of the turtle nests. I’ll be sure to let Barrier Island Girl and Traveling Turtle Girl know.

The Santa Rosa sound is rising:

And it is causing plenty of problems for my neighbors on the sound-side of the island:

I took many more pictures down at the pier this morning… I’ll have them up shortly!

Usually when a purple flag is flying over Pensacola Beach, it means one thing: the Jellyfish have arrived! We get a number of species out here, some dangerous, some not, but this one I found very interesting. This is a Blue Button. This isn’t actually a jellyfish, but a Chondrophore that we found and put in a pot from the kitchen just long enough to take pictures of. What you’re looking at isn’t a single animal, rather a colony of small polyps, each performing a different role in the colony.

Although these are quite harmless, they may cause slight skin irritation if touched. Here’s what the top looks like:

There are several large swans that hang around in the ponds over on the east side of Pensacola Beach. Most of the time, they can be found right out my back door! Judging by the orange and black bill, and white plumage I would guess that these are Mute Swans. They had babies this spring (the babies are called cygnets), but I haven’t seen them in months. I’m thinking they either left the island or were removed from it.

Feeding these swans is risky business. Right up until they were eating, they were hissing and grunting at us:

In this picture, you can clearly see the projection above the bill, characteristic of Mute Swans:

Now they are just getting greedy:

Here on Pensacola Beach, we are starting to see signs of Hurricane Gustav. Although it is scheduled to slam New Orleans to our west, we will still see some impressive weather here on the beach, along with a formidable storm surge. We are currently under a tropical storm warning.

Not the sunniest day on Pensacola Beach:

You can see these strange, low, gray clouds whipping across the island from the north-east:

Hurricane shutters are still going up:

This guy has a quite a challenge ahead of him:

He might have the best view on the island to watch Gustav come in:

Every cloud in paradise has a silver lining:

Looks like I’m not the only one out for a walk on the beach:

The rough surf from a few days ago washed up all kinds of shells:

A few nights ago, before Tropical Storm Fay moved in, i captured this huge bird in my backyard during sunset. This picture is a little blurry. I really need a tripod:

After getting too close he moved up here:

A few minutes later, the heron was gone, and I was left alone with a beautiful Pensacola Beach sunset:

He’s watching over the Santa Rosa Sound.