Earl Swings By . . .

Yesterday afternoon, waves from Hurricane Earl peaked at about 13' along the Spacecoast of Florida. We visited Melbourne Beach, just to see how big they were and to watch the locals try to surf the waves.

Unfortunately, the surfing proved to be not so great because of winds that were causing the waves to fill in quickly, but this guy managed to get a couple short rides on swells bigger than most they've seen in a while. Just getting out past the break looked exhausting, and the swells were moving so fast, most of the riders out there couldn't paddle fast enough to get over the top and down the face of the wave.

We arrived as the sun was beginning to leave the beach, and the birds were beginning to settle, which proved a great time to let my grandson try his hand at photographing them. You can see, from the picture below, that he's got the knack!

Well done! Not bad for his first sanderling on the shore, shot with a digital SLR! It would be great to see more young people out there shooting with cameras rather than guns, wouldn't it?

Not to be outdone, I clicked off a few shots of some of the birds, myself, as the pounding surf turned up some good stuff for the willets to collect.

Thankfully, Earl stayed well to the east of Florida; let's hope it stays off the entire U.S. coast!