Regatta

This weekend the 24th CALEMA MIDWINTERS WINDSURFING FESTIVAL
& Kona North American Championships will take place. We drove up to Cape Canaveral to visit the space center and stumbled upon the event site. It's at a good flat water locale on the Banana River. I'm including a photo of the [img= http://www.calema.com/midwinters.php]calema[/img] rental shop. There was plenty of interesting equipment, lots of reps from Europe, top Formula racers hanging around the rental shop and an attractive park. I met two racers, Gabriel Browne and Fabio Melo, from Maui sails while they were putting new numbers on new sails. Out at Canaveral we experienced some rather interesting viewing of the protected wildlife along with the space exploration facilities. One bird in particular, the Roseate Spoonbill, was rather impressive. According to the Smithsonian, >>The Roseate Spoonbill, a large wading bird with pink plumage and a distinctive spatulate bill, is one of the most striking birds found in North America.<< All the riders on the tour bus that carries visitors around the preserve were taken by it. >>The lovely pink primaries of the Roseate Spoonbill were highly prized for use in the construction of ladies' fans at the turn of the century. This made Spoonbills one of the favorite targets of the professional plume hunters that decimated so many species of wading birds. By the 1930's the once thriving Florida population had dropped to an historic low of 30 to 40 breeding pairs, nesting only in a few small colonies on the keys of Florida Bay. Once they gained full legal protection from hunting the species began to rebound.
Now over a thousand pairs nest in Florida. The ground nesting colonies in Texas and Louisiana are extremely vulnerable to any predator that can make its way to their off shore islands. Entire colonies have been known to shift locations. As suitable sites become increasingly scarce due to coastal development birds may be forced to continue to nest in vulnerable sites. Some populations show high levels of pesticide levels in their eggs but they do not appear to be significantly impaired by egg shell thinning at this time.<<