Galveston Daily News, www.galvnews.com

Galveston Fax, www.guidrynews.com

Spoonbills, monarchs, egrets, seaweed, herons, mullet, pelicans, surf, man o’ wars, dolphins, nutria, stars, sharks, sand dollars, dune cats, cormorants, finches, frogs, sunrises, sandpipers, rattle snakes, wild flowers – you will revel in the nature of Pirates Beach West! Buy binoculars and good bird, seashell, and shore ecology books. Visit preserves at Galveston State Park and LaFitte’s Cove. Get to the beach and ponds often as the bounty changes daily and you may not see the same event again for years –drifts of Coquina clams, exhausted finches of every color, a seahorse or starfish, dolphins breaching, Saturn’s rings, and, oh yes, a cottonmouth or two cooling under houses. But that’s the nature of nature – rare Wendletrap shells are only to be found in the nastiest piles of tube worms, smelly seaweed holds the sand to replenish our beach, overgrown undergrowth draws birds and rabbits, mosquitoes feed the frogs who feed the birds. We’ve already disturbed the natural balance with our construction, our animals, our pruning, trimming, mowing and planting. But there are things you can do to keep your presence less obtrusive – stay off the dunes, keep your plantings as natural as you can tolerate, minimize under-house lights to what’s really necessary for safety, don’t disturb birds, don’t overuse fertilizer or pesticides or kill a critter unnecessarily.