Feb 14, 2010 - Sanibel Island

At Ding Darling Wildlife Preserve

Up early today for to explore Sanibel by bike. First stop was the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge, which takes up a really big part of Sanibel Island. It’s well worth a visit. The information center is very large, with lots of displays explaining what you’ll see in the preserve.  The best time to view the birds in the preserve is at low tide, so after consulting our handheld GPS for tide data, we planned our visit around that. In the process of trying to interpret the info on the GPS, I had a question about tides, so I asked one of the staff members there at the preserve. They have quite a few staff there ready to answer any questions. They have a sense of humor too, because when I walked up to the information desk and said, "Good morning, gentlemen," they all immediately and simultaneously looked behind them to see who I was talking to.0

The first man I talked to didn’t feel he’d answered my question as thoroughly as it might be, so he referred me to another fella there.  This second guy used to calculate the tide data for use by various US government agencies in the days before computers, using a slide rule. So the guy knew his stuff. The Prince of Tides.

So off we went on our bikes to see what wading birds we could see, and to pick up an Earth Cache (geocachers will understand) at one of the observation towers there. I did manage to get some  photos, which I’ve added to a new album, but I did feel a little undergunned. There were some serious photographers there, with long telephoto lenses a yard long and a foot in diameter at the end. Probably worth more than the rPod. As I stood there with my pathetic zoom lens, one of these serious guys let me take a look through his Canon with the cannon attached to it.




Anhinga drying its feathers - Ding Darling Preserve



We then tried to circumnavigate Sanibel with our bikes, but ended up cutting it short. We still biked a total of about 15 miles that day, and picked up another micro cache while we were at it. Then we went back to the preserve and drove the parts we hadn’t seen on our bikes. It’s pretty inexpensive to do so: it’s a buck for pedestrians and bikes, and five bucks for a carload.



Horseshoe Crab shell - Ding Darling Preserve


On the way back to camp we stopped at the Sun Country Citrus Store and fulfilled all our citrus needs. They’ve got about anything you can make from citrus at these places: juices in all combinations, preserves, cookies, cakes, and pies, and ice cream, just to name a few. And fresh citrus too.

Ding Darling Wildlife Preserve

Ding Darling Wildlife Preserve