Outdoors
The Lido Beach Skimmers Have a Lease. It Ends in September.
The sign on the path to Lido Beach says the birds nest March through August. The state says Sarasota's season runs Feb. 15 to Sept. 1. The skimmers say nothing, because they're asleep.
There's a wooden kiosk on the sandy path into Lido Beach that most of us walk past with a cooler and a sense of purpose. It's worth a stop. The sign is titled Florida Beach-Nesting Birds, and it explains, in nice colorful panels, why a roped-off patch of perfectly good sand is not available for your chair.
The calendar on the sign
The sign says these birds nest from March through August. That's the short version. The state's official breeding season for both Sarasota and Manatee counties runs Feb. 15 to Sept. 1, and the FWC's species plan notes chicks of some species can still be around into September. So the birds' lease technically ended a month ago. Whether they've read it is another matter.
Who's on the sign
The sign lists four birds: the black skimmer, least tern, snowy plover and Wilson's plover. The FWC lists the skimmer, least tern and snowy plover as state-designated Threatened. The skimmer is the one you'll notice, a black-and-white bird with an orange bill whose bottom half is longer than the top, which it drags through the water to catch fish.
Lido is the real deal for skimmers. Your Observer reported in May that about 1,100 adults were nesting on North Lido Beach, and Audubon Florida's Abby O'Donnell expects them to keep coming back because it's where they've had the most success. In 2023 Audubon reported that the colony moved a mile south to dodge fish crows that kept stealing eggs, then raised at least 310 chicks, the most of any skimmer colony in the state that year. Smart birds. Annoying crows.
The part that applies today
Dogs aren't allowed on Lido Beach, leashed or not. The city says so, and the sign says dogs can destroy nests and flightless chicks. Skimmers treat any dog as a predator, even from far away. Audubon's stewards counted 161 dogs at the nesting sites in 2023, many of them arriving by boat. The dog beach in the area is Brohard Paw Park in Venice.
Where do the skimmers go after nesting? Audubon's banding work shows thousands winter in Collier County, and some of the birds there were banded as far away as Massachusetts. So the skimmer you see in January may have a longer commute than yours.
Next spring, when the ropes go up, walk around them. The sign already told you. I'll be the one reading it a second time.
— Sandy
