Okay, recently I've really started photographing birds and in doing so I feel I've garnered so much more insight into their natural history than ever before. For example, anyone who has been along the Laguna Madre or out on South Padre Island has seen those expansive stretches of "mud flats." They may not look like much--empty, barren, desolate, and to many of you they look like a great place to do donuts in your 4x4s but in reality they are teeming with life.

During the spring and the summer months our shore birds thrive on these mud flats for nesting habitat. All types of terns, willets, black-necked stilts, plovers, Oyster Catchers, etc.. etc.. etc.. Usually the eggs are small and the nests especially difficult to see. Once hatched, the chicks are well adapted in color and camouflage to lay flat against the mud and avoid detection. However these great techniques of avoidance also come at a high cost when humans are involved. One person running their truck out onto these mud flats and doing donuts and figure eights can destroy nesting populations.

Yesterday I went out early in the morning to the mud flats just south of Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island. Here there are easily two dozen or more nesting Least Terns, several Black-necked Stilts, Wilson's Plovers, and Willets. As soon as you approach the area all the birds start making a ruckus and the terns will start dive bombing you. This is a sure sign there is nesting around--otherwise the birds would just fly away. As I walked along the mud flats, surveying what was around I started to see the tern nests. It takes a trained eye to pick them out, but once you do you see them everywhere. Easily three fourths of the nests I found were laid in the depression of where someone had walked across the mud flats. I saw at least a dozen foot prints with two tiny little dappled eggs in them. Of course this means when walking across these mud flats if you're not paying attention you will be stepping on nests and eggs.

Worse yet, through the entire mud flat are deep tire tracks from a vehicle doing donuts. Of course when I start walking along these tire tracks, what do you think I saw? I found that the chicks especially liked the deep trenches of the tire tracks to hide in while danger was near. So should another vehicle visit the mud flats, we all know you tend to follow others tire tracks when you're driving in unsavory territory, they are almost guaranteed to kill every chick hiding in those old tracks. If they get off the tracks? They are destroying more nests and potential chicks hiding out in the open. There is no way you can spot these nests from a vehicle, especially at the speeds these people travel.

Last, but certainly not least, many of the walkers who do enjoy a tromp across the mudflats often let their dogs run free around them. These animals have a fantastic sense of smell and are unhindered in finding both chicks and eggs.

So in short, during the nesting months these wonderful mud flats are extremely fragile environments that should be protected and avoided. Is 15 minutes of driving in a circle really worth killing so many helpless little animals? I should hope not. Really the best remedy would be erecting impassable barriers around the flats, keeping vehicles out and posting signs as to the reason for this. But that's unlikely to ever happened as a lot of it is private property and for sale. So I hope that if we can educate people that should they get the urge to drive or walk across these flats, if they see birds acting funny and yelling at them, perhaps now isn't a good time to do it.