Today my Florida Master Naturalist students and I had our second field trip of the course. We explored Tigertail Lagoon on Marco Island. I know I've said this many times before in other posts, but it is such a wonderful place to visit. The class got a first hand look at the biodiversity associated with seagrass communities. Besides some bird watching we also pulled a seine net to check out some fish species. I thought I'd let the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy!!
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| The group checks out a reddish egret as it feed along the flats. |
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| One of many small horseshoe crabs found on the flats today. |
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| Bird watching! We saw a juvenile bald eagle, osprey, ruddy turnstone, great egret, snowy egret, white ibis, brown pelican, cattle egret, tri-colored heron, little blue heron, cormorant, reddish egret, and prairie warbler. |
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| A nice stand of shoal grass (Halodule wrightii) |
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| We had a very low tide, and several patches of shoal grass were completely exposed. |
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| A "subtle" reminder of the critical wildlife area found within Tigertail Lagoon. |
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| We found many spider crabs among the seagrass today. |
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| More exposed shoal grass |
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| The tracks left behind by horseshoe crabs. |
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| Seine netting the lagoon. |
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| Participants try to key out some of the fish we caught in the seine net. |
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| The class really got into trying to identify the fish specimens themselves. |
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| A juvenile Gulf flounder caught in our seine net. Notice the 3 oscillated spots on its dorsal side, which helps identify it. |
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