After the hikes and beach, Kate did not feel like there was a need to tour Fort Morgan. John felt like they should go to the Fort Morgan end of the peninsula to take a picture, since we drove all this way already. Kate concurred, so we went to the end of the peninsula. At the end were three sites – Fort Morgan, the Ferry, and the McMillian Fort Morgan Fishing Pier. Technically, there is a public boat ramp, but it is essentially part of the pier. The fishing pier serves as the wave break for the boat ramp. We were both interested in the fishing pier, so we parked and went exploring.

Kate grabbed her scope and John grabbed binoculars. There were some Brown Pelicans flying around, but we were not expecting much with all the fishermen. We checked the pylons, and they just had cormorants. There were some seagulls and terns flying around, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

John scanned the oil rigs with binoculars and spotted dark triangles in the water. Jaws? Nope, a pod of dolphins was swimming by! They were never surfaced all at the same time, but it looked like 8 to 12 dolphins of varying sizes. Kate took a video with the scope and phone.

And Kate took selfie, but not with the scope.

We did not see much more in the water near the oil rigs, but at the other end of the pier, the Brown Pelicans started to feed.

While Kate was watching the pelicans feed, John noticed something over by the ferry loading zone. Using Kate’s scope, we verified it was a Common Loon with mating plumage. John went back to the car to get the camera, while Kate watched the loon and pelicans.

John decided to try to go along the shore to get a better loon picture while Kate tried to photograph the feeding pelicans. John had some distraction issues getting to the loon. He saw what might be terns we had never seen, but they never landed.

The closest he got to a tern picture was a flying tern butt. At the first opening at the shore, there was a trail to the beach rock wall.

John tried to get past, but a terrifying beast blocked his way.

Well, he thought he was terrifying. He ran out on the rocks and performed his lizard dominance push ups to try to scare John away. When that did not work, …

he inflated his dewlap. Either he was trying to scare John out of his territory or get a date.

In either case, he failed and ran to hide in the rocks.

And John took more loon pictures, after he passed the Minotaur, er, Anole.

And moved a little closer..

Oh look, a puppy, er, Great Blue Heron on the ferry loading road.

And this is the closest that he got to the Common Loon; it was still about 40 to 50 feet away.

John danced across the rocks to the ferry end of the rock wall. (Almost fell on his face repeatedly sounds so much less graceful and poetic.) While walking back, John noticed that the pelicans were started to feed again, so he tried to get a picture of them diving into the water.

He was able to get a picture of the Brown Pelican dive for fish. It took a few tries, and the focus is not perfect. It is still a neat series of images. And then, it has to drag its butt back out of the water, probably with a headache.

When John made it back to the pier, Kate was still trying to get pelican dives on the scope. Aiming the scope and timing the video is much more difficult than the camera. After reviewing the videos, she did get a feeding dive video!

At the end of the pier, there was a rack wall wave break with a dozen little shore birds. They turned out to be a new bird – the Sanderling. They are very cute.

We expected to spend about fifteen minutes at the pier, but we left between one and two hours later.