The Four S's

Finally, after three weeks I made it to the beach Wed., for some sand, sea, sun, and shells . . .
Same time as usual (arrived 20 min. before sunrise) . . .

A couple small lettered olives in the same spot . . .

A lightning venus (top) and an Atlantic rangia . . .

A very pretty, very unusually colored blood ark . . .

An understated sunrise . . .

More olives . . .

A southern surfclam . . .

False angelwing (there are four species of angelwings here in FL) . . .

A calico scallop . . .

View of Matanzas Inlet . . . this is a "vein" of the Matanzas River, which is part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Another lightning venus . . . two in the same visit is quite rare!

Hard to ID this ark, does not look like any of the 10 species we have in FL . . . most close is the Incongruous ark but they're pretty common at this beach and do not typically look quite like this (shape).

A very pretty shark eye moonsnail, thanks to discoloration that is caused by a shell being buried in sediment for awhile (due to a lack of oxygen).

I passed this great blue heron on my way back north, and it started to follow me! I'm guessing it thought I might be dropping bait fish like an off-coast fisherman, but I was only dropping discarded shells.

A jingle (oyster half) on L, crossed barred venus below.

A cream-colored scallop . . .

A more typical calico scallop . . .

Shore birds . . . there were royal terns, sandwich terns, laughing gulls . . . but what caught my attention was a small flock of very small, very dark terns! They were very skittish; all but one flew off when I took this photo (they circled back). The third, small bird from the left is what I believe is a black tern! No other bird matches the description; note the very short legs.

Bad photo . . . there were several of the darker birds, very pretty in person, which turn out to be juvenile laughing gulls. The top left bird is an adult gull. The five white birds are royal terns.