Bonus Day at the Beach

The beach was good to us today! Frances and I arrived at the Estuary Beach at 10:30 just as the entire pod of dolphins were swimming by about 50 yards out. Yippee! We walked the beach and kept pace with them for about fifteen minutes. We could see where the baby dolphin was! I saw a snorkeler swimming aggressively out towards the dolphins, and then he began swimming in the opposite direction of the dolphins at which point I lost track of him. I wonder where he went.

The frigates were out this morning too. They are those large villainess looking, black thieving birds. They allowed me to take some photos of them soaring high above the condominiums. That's where they seem to hover in the mornings. Given that they eat fish, I wonder why they hover over the buildings.


As Frances and I began our usual stroll toward the estuary, we witnessed one of the Frigates give chase and attempt to steal a fish from a gull. A second gull appeared to protect his pal and the frigate backed off. I always feel like I'm watching a Nature documentary whenever I get to see something like that.

On the walk back I saw two of the frigates look like they may get into a hassle with each other, although nothing came of it. Frigates are considered the robber barons of the local bird world. I had to wonder if there was honor amoung the thieves!

It was very overcast and muggy today, but it was nice having some clouds to change the usually sunshiny scenery a bit.


Blue herons, pelicans and all the usual birds made there appearance as well. It seem Frances and I should be coming to the beach twice daily. Once in the morning for the dolphins and frigates, and the evening for the pelicans, jumping fish, and sunsets. We like that beach!

We got home around noon. Workers at the house were preparing the back of the house for painting tomorrow. Everything was under control so Betsy and I went out for lunch at the Marina Cantina. It's comparable to a deli you'd find back home. It's probably the first time I've sought out non-Mexican food since being here.

Betsy ran off to run errands and I came back to house to do some writing. If my story outline and synopsis doesn't change, my story will have 27 chapters. I began working on Chapter 3 this afternoon. The first two thirds of my Coyote story already has much complete about it. Back in November I wrote 50,000 words when participating in National Novel Writers Month (NanoWrimo). Having ironed out the first two chapters yesterday I thought Chapter 3 would be fairly easy. In Chapter 3 I introduce the character of "Dragonfly."

Several years ago I photographed a red dragonfly in my garden. It allowed me to take many close-up pictures of it, and by the time I was done it even let me touch it's wings numerous times. I have a lot of pictures of it and have shown it in galleries a few times. When I photographed it, it was hovering around and lighting on some Shasta Daisies that had gone to seed. So I assumed that Dragonflies like Daisies and probably other flowers.

So! The Dragonfly in my story loves flowers, pollen and nectar and I built a portion of the story around that fact. Today I did some research to find out exactly what kind of flower they favor. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they don't like flowers at all. They are carnivores! Their favorite food is mosquitoes. Well you can't fault them for that. But they'll other insects as well, and will even eat small fish!

So I'm momentarily stuck as I try to fix the portion of my story that depended on Dragonfly liking nectar. I guess I'll have switch over to something like a mosquito burrito!

And on that note... it's time for dinner!