(From jacksonville.com) Jacksonville”s Huguenot Park, Florida – Next to the families on vacation and weekend visitors perfecting their tans, managers at Jacksonville”s Huguenot Park made space on the beach this summer for another crowd: birds.
About 400 feet of oceanfront is closed to people so thousands of terns and gulls nesting in the park’s dunes can have a safe shoreline, where chicks wait to be fed by parents returning from the sea.
“It was incredible to go out there and see that many birds. … They’re spilling out all over the beach,” said Johnson, who works as a biologist.
They were hatching, the parents were bringing them out of the dunes onto the beach. … You can watch parents flying back with fish.” “You have to have a balance,” he said.
You have to protect the wildlife.”
(By Steve Patterson)