Stork nests

watch your fingers

We made our annual trip to Florida to visit friends in Palm Beach County at the beginning of March. This is the latest in winter we've gone, and the differences in what birds were around were interesting.

domestic bliss

At Wakodahatchee Wetlands park, the Wood Storks were nesting. Some of them were in trees right next to the boardwalk, practically close enough to touch if you didn't mind losing a couple of fingers. In January and February of past years, the dominant nesters were Great Blue Herons; this time it was the storks and smaller shorebirds like Tricolored Heron and Cattle Egret.

shorebird condo

All the little hammocks had nests in them. They were like shorebird condos. They generally had Great Blue Herons at the top.

"I just adore a penthouse view..."

Stork nests were below the Great Blues, and then Anhinga nests farther down.

nice neighbors

Cattle Egret and Tricolored Herons tucked their nests into cozy little crannies throughout the trees. Double-Crested Cormorants mostly had their own hammocks.

cozy

There wasn't much nesting at nearby Green Cay, though there were a nice pair of Screech Owl. The Spoonbills seem to have abandoned it this year, though. I'll post more Florida photos soon, in the meantime, one more Stork nest:

Big White Birds

Just because, here's some photos of the big white wading birds of Florida.

the more I look at this one, the more I like it (Snowy Egret, Green Cay)

Some of the birds at the wetlands parks are quiet used to people and go about their business within a few feet of the boardwalks.

up close and personal with a Great Egret at the Green Cay boardwalk

Great Egret hunting, Wakodahatchee Wetlands Park

Cattle Egrets were happy to get close as well. At Wkosahatchee, a bunch of them flew up onto the boardwalk railing only a few feet away from us.

no, you back off

Let me tell you something, buddy...

more 'tude

I looked at this next one a long time while photographing, and then again at the photo at home. It's a Cattle Egret, too, just in a slightly different state of plumage.

Here's an odd one out for the big white birds. This is a Little Blue Heron--they're white in their immature plumage:

odd one out

I'll finish this up with a White Ibis in nice light:

damn fine lookin' bird

Awesome Majesty

not a good sign

I have no particular point here, just showing some more photos from Florida. This Turkey Vulture buzzed me a couple of time while I was walking around Loxahatchee Refuge. It had been a longish hike, and I was flagging a little, but I felt that the bird was a being a bit presumptuous.

don't walk on that log!

At Wakodahatchee Wetlands Park, this alligator waited patiently for a mistake.

marching to his own beat

Nearby, some Cattle Egrets flew right up on the boardwalk railing. No fear at all.

yikes!

A Wood Stork flew right past me at Green Cay. Quite startling; they are surprisingly quick. I was lucky to get any kind of shot at all.

South Florida retention pond

This Limpkin walked around the pond, passing maybe 25 feet from the house. Not especially skittish.

One prominent feature of the South Florida landscape are the retention ponds. Every housing development has one, sometimes several; it's typical to see a circle of houses with a little pond in the middle.

These ponds aren't very deep, and aren't too clean, but they help contain runoff and keep oil and fertilizer and other pollutants out of the water supply. Plus, where there's water, there will be birds, especially since the ponds often have some fish in them.

Our friends Adam and Judy live in a South Florida development, and have a little retention pond in the backyard. The homeowners' association hasn't done much landscaping around it, so it's just a pool at the end of the lawn, but they still have birds, which we greatly enjoyed when we visited last month. There was a big flock of White Ibises that hung out must days like huge pigeons.

acting like they own the place

And a pair of Limpkns were frequently present.

Limpkins foraging

I'm guessing they were a mated pair, since I saw them passing food between them.

At evening the Limpkins flew across the pond, giving an raspy call.

Occasionally there was a Great Egret, and once a Great Blue Heron. At sunset, ducks would settle on the pond and around the shore; usually Mottled Ducks, but our last evening there thirty or so Ring-Necked Ducks decided to spend the night there.

Great Blue Heron on a drainage pipe

Great Egret at work

Plus there were flyovers by Osprey, Turkey Vulture, Kestrel, Merlin, and Peregrine Falcon--that really made the Ibises jump--and a visit by a Royal Tern who fished for a while and then flew on.

Tern hovering on the hunt

Tern in the evening sky

Oh, I didn't even mention the Anhingas, or the Cormorants, or the Killdeer... I think we had 16 species, Just amazing stuff to find in the backyard.

Florida close-ups

To return to Florida once more, the best thing about the Green Cay wetlands park is that the birds were often right up close to the boardwalk--sometimes even on it, like this Tricolored Heron.

And also the territorial Limpkin I mentioned in my first Florida post:

Those birds had no real fear of people.

We made two trips to Green Cay. On Presidents' Day we had wanted to see the nearby Wakodahatchee park, another man-made wetlands area somewhat older than Green Cay, but it has very little parking (Probably better to try it on a non-holiday weekday). Since rain was threatening, we decided not to wait and headed back to the more capacious Green Cay.

The rains did come while we were there, sometimes quite heavily, though many of the birds weren't bothered much by it, especially the waders. You can see some rain in the Tricolored Heron photos.

Smaller birds avoided the rain more, but even some of the Grackles stayed out in the open.

When the rain stopped, they all came back out. Here's a tree full of Grackles in the clearing storm:

There were some very visible large nests near the boardwalks, including this Great Blue Heron nest:

And a coupel of trees right next to that had several Anhinga nests.

There were a lot of Anhingas. I didn't see any come up on the boardwalks, but they got pretty close. I like this subadult, who looked very punk.

Their feet are pretty amazing:

I still can't believe how close the American Bitterns got to the boardwalk.

Aren't they supposed to be really skittish?

The Spoonbills were a bit more standoffish, but still pretty close.

And here's one more Tricolored Heron portrait to finish off:

And that's it for Florida. I'll be back soon with Spring's early arrivals here in New York City.

Florida, part 2: more birds

Thanks to the wonders of technology, we got continually notified as our flight home was delayed again and again, so we were able to travel more around the Ft. Lauderdale area. We spent a little time on a narrow strip of beach near a small park (Hugh Taylor Birch State Park), where Adam had frequently gone when he lived nearby. There were Sanderlings dashing in and out of the crashing waves, and Brown Pelicans cruising stately on the high wind.

The Sanderlings were another life bird for me--like the Blue-Winged Teal, I'm sure I've seen them before, but they weren't on my list. Cute little guys.

Anyway, I also got great looks at a lot of birds I had seen before, so I'm going to share a few pictures. This Belted Kingfisher was hovering pretty high over Green Cay. I guess she was grabbing insects from the air? This is one of my better bird-in-flight photos.

Most of the familiar birds we saw were at Green Cay. This Green Heron hinted along a marsh edge only twenty feet or so from the boardwalk.

Soras are usually hard to spot (except the one who was stuck in the Loch in Central Park last Fall). This one was pretty confiding.

Snowy Egrets are usually shyer than this, too. I wonder what about Green Cay made these birds all so confiding?

My first Painted Bunting was the famous Prespect Park (Brooklyn) bird earlier in the winter. In south Florida, they're feeder birds.

There's a feeder off the path between the parking lot and the nature center, which the Buntings liked. I saw my first female painted bunting there. While not as gaudy as the males, they are quite pretty birds. I think they are the only all-green birds in the U.S.

This very friendly Boat-Tailed Grackle hung around the Greek restaurant we stopped at the first day, begging food and singing. The waiter told us the bird would steal sugar packets from the tables.

There were Boat-Tailed Grackles all over Green Cay. Here's a nice close shot of a female.

We saw various warblers, as well. Besides this Palm Warbler (one of several), Yellow-Rumped Warblers were thick in the reeds. There were a few Black-and_White Warblers as well, and along the path from the parking lot I spotted a Prairie Warbler.

And in the last minutes of our second trip to Green Cay, we spotted this Nashville Warbler near the parking lot, a local rarity that had been frequently sighted there this winter.

This Red-Shouldered Hawk was one of two hawk species we spotted in Florida (the other were a juvenile and an adult Marsh Harrier). This Red-Shouldered is quite pale, which apparently is a common color morph in south Florida.

Here's a nice close-up of a Pied-Billed Grebe to round things out. I'll have one more Florida post in a couple of days.