Submitted

Two new restaurant signs adorn the Esplanade these days, representing a lot of new dining experiences for Islanders and visitors. Tara’s is in the place formerly occupied by Vergina restaurant. CJ’s On the Bay is the new name of the former Bayview restaurant, which includes the outside bar with its great view of the marina and Smokehouse Bay.

Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

Three types of shore birds, skimmers, terns and sandpipers, at rest on Marco Beach. Hurricanes are dangerous, but our water birds are tough and resilient.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More The Marcophile

• Marcophiles: Everything you want to know about warblers
• Marcophiles: Marco says bye to some and welcome to most
• Marcophiles: A walk along Marco’s beach

Share and Enjoy [?]

This time of year is usually the slowest season for Marco restaurants and bars, but you’d never know things were supposed to be slow at the Esplanade these days and nights.

Tara’s Steak and Lobster House is open officially as of tonight in the space that used to be Vergina.

CJ’s On the Bay is the new name to go along with a lot of upgrades and changes at the restaurant formerly known as Bayview.

As wunderkind restaurateur Tara Trevethan opens her restaurant at its new Esplanade location tonight, she knows that this time, this day, came very close to not happening until maybe two months later.

“The other day we heard from the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation that we would be tied up for almost 60 days to process all our licenses,” Tara explains. “I wrote our wonderful governor Charlie Crist and his people expedited it, which is why I’m able to open now.

“We’re thrilled. My mom was crying and we were doing a little dance. Chef Laura from CJ’s On the Bay came over — the health inspector had just left that place — and she saw us jumping around and teasingly said she’d never seen anybody that excited over a visit from the health inspector. We were so emotional.”

Tara’s will open daily at 5 p.m., with dinner seatings until 10 p.m. From Oct. 1, Tara’s enhanced happy hour runs from 4:30-7 p.m., with a high-end tapas (small plates) menu — baby lamb chops, chicken sates, spring rolls, etc., plus special martinis and excellent wines.

Plans are in the works for an official grand opening later in October.

Bye, bye Bayview — Congrats to CJ’s On The Bay

Across the plaza, CJ’s On the Bay is packed with new food and features, including big screen TV’s in the indoor bar, showing major sports.

You’ll also notice new signs and the employees wearing shrimp-colored shirts (others call them coral or salmon, but never pink).

Curt and Jacquie Koon have completed the bulk of the renovations of atmosphere and menu in the restaurant and bars they bought last spring.

All these changes at the Esplanade represent a lot of activity on the restaurant scene for this time of year. As we reported recently, some places are closed for several weeks at a time for maintenance, vacations, etc.

One venerable Marco restaurant we were unable to reach for that article on closings was Konrad’s Seafood and Grille Room at Marco Walk.

“We’re not taking time off,” says Konrad. “We’re open every day but Sunday, as always. Konrad’s has been in business here for more than 17 years.

A bird’s eye view of hurricanes

Pretend you’re a small shorebird or a pelican and a hurricane comes your way. Come on, just play along with me, just pretend.

You’re a bird, remember, so you can’t watch The Weather Channel 24/7 and, like most humans, you don’t have any idea what a millibar is. So what do you do about the storm, the rains that will soak your feathers and the wind that could blow you to Cancun and back?

For answers we turn to Ted Below, one of best-informed humans we know of when it comes to birds. Ted is an ornithologist with the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve here. He has more than 30 years experience monitoring water birds along our coast and has lived here in Collier County since 1955.

“Most birds just go about their business and don’t do anything until the wind gets up to about 50-60 knots,” Below says. “Then they get behind something and get out of the wind.”

Do birds sense when bad weather is nigh? Says Ted Below:

“They do not know. They don’t have NOAA. They can’t tell whether a storm is coming. That’s a bunch of baloney, that they anticipate storms and move out of the area.

“For example in hurricane Wilma, at the ABC Islands (by the Jolley Bridge), where many birds spend the night — herons, egrets, pelicans, cormorants, etc. — they were there. We lost over half of the vegetation on those islands and the birds that died were the ones underneath trees that fell on them. The other birds survived.

“We think these are delicate little things and that bad storms will hurt them, but they’ve evolved with all this stuff. They wouldn’t be around if such storms were too negative for them.”

Don’t even think that maybe Below doesn’t care about the birds. To the contrary, he does, but he also knows them and their nature. As Ted puts it, for the birds and humans alike:

“It’s life down here and all we can do is go with it like they (the birds) do.”