In my daily newspaper column on beach walking in The Sun Herald. 1 usually report on things seen that day along the shoreline. Mostly they are mundane observations-the flight of a herring gull, a blue crab at water's edge, errant waves, small cratersleft by raindrops on dry sand, and the like. Although not recorded, the absence of things, normally seen elicits questions in my mind, such as, "Where are the brown pelicans? The answer to that query is, of course, that they leave the mainland during late spring and early summer for the nesting season on the barrier islands, returning in August, about the same time that the least terns leave on their fall migration.
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