"From sea to shining sea"

Friday
Our last day on Sanibel, before beginning the long drive home tomorrow. We started off with a walk in the SCCF Nature Preserve (Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation)
The preserve encompasses the Sanibel River, uplands, and a season freshwater wetland - a unique feature for a barrier island. However, we were getting bitten by mosquitoes there, despite having repellant on, so we left and returned again to Baileys Tract, which has become a favourite of ours these last two weeks, always something different to see, and we'd never been bitten there! Today the stars were a great egret, a yellow-crowned night heron, the black-necked stilts we've seen most days, alligators and an immature blue heron. The afternoon we spent at the beach, enjoying the calm waters. The bird highlight of the afternoon was a group of Dowitchers, as I went for my usual walk along the beach - very handsome birds, and new to me. There were more clouds around this afternoon, though still comfortably warm, and as we were leaving the beach around 6pm, these led to some beautiful light over the sea. After showering and changing, we caught the sunset at Turners Beach just across the bridge on Captiva, then went for a last dinner out at George and Wendy's.