Huguenot Memorial Park, Jacksonville, Florida

Huguenot Memorial Park is a 449 acre sand spit bordered on the south by the St. Johns River and on the north by Fort George Inlet.  Besides being a convenient stopping point for me it is a nesting area for gulls and terns.  The beaches are popular with the sun worshippers and vehicular travel is allowed.  The authorities have divided the spit into three major areas.  The inner dunes where most of the nesting occurs is completely off limits.  Vehicles are allowed to travel in a circle around the dunes between two sets of rope.  A third area is some of the beach at the far end of the spit where the birds often rest and feed.  Here vehicles are prohibited but pedestrians have full access.  This seemed to be a good arangement which gave the birds most of the protection they need while at the same time not severely curtailing human activities. 

Occassionally the colony would be disturbed by something and thousands of gulls and terns would rise in the air in a deafening chorus

The Prius as a beach car:  Great milege until you get stuck-then not so much.

The campground is rather severe although there are good sites on the water.  There are no hookups and flyovers by military helicopter from the Mayport Naval Air Station is almost nonstop-even late into the darkness.  After arriving I carried my 100-400 lens and walked around the dune area checking out the gull and tern colony  There were literally thousands of Laughing Gulls with a few hundred Royal Terns and a couple dozen Black Skimmers.  Gull-billed and Least Terns are known to frequent the area but I never picked any out among the thousands of Laughing Gulls.

When I arrived back at camp just before sunset I discovered I had new neighbors.  A woman with a truck, a new tent, a twelve-year old son, and a new boyfriend was setting up camp.  As the woman struggled to figure out the tent her heavily tatooed boyfriend watched and laughed.  The boyfriend had a limited but very colorful language which was getting on her nerves.  Apparently this weekend camping trip was sort of a trial to see if the boyfriend could bond with her son.  As I downloaded and previewed the evening's images the couple became louder and louder (it was now dark and the tent was not finished).  At some point she discovered that he had smoked the last of her cigarettes and she slugged him in the face and disappeared into the dark.  The boyfriend threatened to leave but he had no transportation.  The young boy who now thought he might be spending the night alone displayed the same colorful language that he no doubt had picked up from the boyfriend.   A little after midnight peace returned to this new American family, the helicopter flights switched far south and I was able to get a little sleep.

In the morning I joined two other photographers before sunset to shoot the colony.

A pair of courting Laughing Gulls

A Royal Tern carrying a fish which is often presented to it's mate as part of the courting ritual

There were a few Sandwich Tern in the colony also.  The yellow-tipped bill is a good field mark.