On July 3, I was at the South Dunes Picnic Area Beach on Jekyll Island with my family. Around 4:30 pm, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a strange bird gliding about 75' above the beach. I saw it land in the water about 150 yards up the beach. I made a mental note to go check out the bird, but promptly forgot as, at that point in time, my 4 year old and 1 year old started demanding attention. At 5:00 pm, we decided to head back to our hotel. About 5 minutes later, as we were getting ready to haul all of our stuff over the boardwalk, I took one last look at the ocean and noticed the strange bird about 20 yards offshore. With limited time, I decided to snap off some pictures. I walked to the shore and took the attached photos from about 20 yards away. My camera has 10x optical zoom with 12-32x digitial zoom option, so I was able to zoom in pretty close on the bird.

Hassling the bird were a middle-aged man (in the bottom photo) and his teenaged son. Interestingly, the bird wouldn't fly away but would rear on its feet, flap its wings, and hiss. Not sure what happened in the end. I had to run to help haul one year old and beach gear over the boardwalk. Hopefully, the shearwater regurgitated on the folks hassling it.

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