My dad lives near the beach. I love to go there with him and observe sea birds. Some day I would like to study birds that live close to the ocean. My favorite is the cute little black turnstone. They run around the water, chasing the waves, turning over stuff to find food.
	I go down to watch ocean birds at different times of day. To see birds better, I bring binoculars, a bird book, and a spotting scope with me. The rarest bird I’ve ever seen is the nene, the Hawaiian version of a Canadian goose. I saw nenes when I was in Hawaii. We were at Haleakala, a volcano on Maui. The birds were pretty easy to find—they chased me around the parking lot!
	Sometimes I go out whale watching from a boat. I see whales and dolphins, as well as sea birds that I don’t usually see from the shore. One type of whale I see is the blue whale, the biggest living animal. I’ve also seen humpback whales and gray whales, even some mothers and babies.
	I also like to look at bird bones. My favorite thing about them is that they are hollow. Most animals have spongy bone inside their long bones, called marrow, but birds’ hollow bones are light and help them to fly.
	My aunt asked me to bring her back some sand from Hawaii. I decided to bring some home for myself, too, and used it to do a project for the science fair. I collected sand from Hawaii and from near my grandma’s house. I wanted to figure out how much of the sand was shell and how much was magnetic, so I put the sand in little containers and did three tests on it.