Great Blue Heron

Aunt Nance, We were discussing on another post how to ID the herons from the Pelicans. I'm still new to the seabird identification. I grew up in the area, but never paid attention to the birds.

Well the good news for the Destin, Florida area is that the oil never really hit the beaches like it did it New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast further west of Destin, Florida. A beach called Pensacola Beach, Florida and Navarre Beach, Florida and Mobile, Alabama got more impact. More impact the further west you go. If you zoom out on the map above you can see the areas I mention. If you look at the Destin Beach pictures, the water is still Emerald color, which is why its called the Emerald Coast and the birds and fish were out when I was out there. I hope to go out Sunday or Monday if I can, for some more shore, Beach, Marsh, and Bay side pictures. I think Destin, Florida and the nearby waterways escaped the worst environmental impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the economic impact is still being felt by the fishermen especially. Most other stuff seems to have rebounded, like tourists and beach visitors. There was a heavy media campaign to visit Florida with "beach web cams" and stuff like that, for the northerners who heard only horrible stories on the nightly news. It seems where it was bad, it was very bad, but Destin eastward it seems OK, fine. I hope my pictures show that, even though there is still concern for longer-term effects. With the chemical disbursement agents they dropped into the oil, and the oil that escaped the containment barriers and other efforts...most of it seemed to settle in the marshes a little to the west of Destin, Florida. But, the worrisome part is what happened to the disbursed oil? If it settled directly where it was when the chemical agent was introduced, then the bottom feeders will be in it and feed on it, and it will be traveling up and out the food web/food chain and the bigger predators could be collecting this in their systems about now.

For the most part, Destin area lucked out. The oil came ashore in little droplets very little bits, or at least much less than expected and feared. The local fishermen and lifeguard told me that the oil "went deep" and "mostly got caught in currents away from the [Destin] beach" "except for a few drops here and there on swimsuits".