The nesting season is close to done.
Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring volunteers have been monitoring the beaches since April and now the end is near.
The shorebird season officially ends Oct. 1, according to the Florida Shorebird Alliance, which thanked its many volunteers in a September newsletter.
Anna Maria Island this season had only two least tern nests, both predated by raccoons shortly after they were identified.
But AMI remains a birding paradise. Gulls, terns, plovers, ospreys, skimmers and pelicans abound and should be enjoyed from a distance so as not to disturb.
Sept. 6 did not disappoint as a brown pelican waited for fish to escape a casting net and a ruddy turnstone in breeding plumage strutted at the shoreline on the south end of the island in Bradenton Beach.
Sea turtle season also is nearing its end, with 102 nests left to hatch as of Sept. 10.
Volunteers remain focused on the unhatched nests and speculate on the possibility of breaking the high hatchling number from 2018 — 35,788.
The hatchling count through Sept. 10 was 34,884. So with 102 nests left at an average of 79 hatchlings per nest in 2022, breaking the record is possible.
Of course, the reality is not every nest will be successful. There will be unhatched and predated eggs. And there may be disorientations.
“I was walking from the Bradenton Beach Police Department to city hall and noticed a deceased hatchling Sept. 8,” Islander reporter Robert Anderson told me this past week.
The hatchling was about 200 yards from the beach. Whether it crawled to Highland Avenue or was dropped by a bird in flight remains a mystery.
Volunteers hope there are less reports of disorientations and more successes from remaining nests, which could hatch by the end of the month, bringing a new season for the volunteers: fundraising season.
AMITW, in the past, has raised money at the Anna Maria Farmers Market and the volunteers hope to do so again in 2022-23.
For more information about turtle watch, contact Barbara Riskay at snqqpy24@aol.com or 404-275-9422.
