"Reddish" ?

I reduced the size of this photo for memory space issues with Blogger, but I think you can still see how interesting and different this bird is. This is first reddish egret I have ever seen and photographed.  I thought at first that is was a heron because it was so large...but the stabbing bill is supposed to be the give-away if my research understanding is correct.

This was taken in Florida a year or so ago. I am having company so I am posting this just to keep this blog up-to-date.

Eyeball to eyeball.

Flamingos are such stunning, elegant, and unusual birds.  I have seen them at zoos and in the wild and am fascinated by their exotic beauty and stunning colors, orange feathers and clashing pink feet, as if they had been dressed by Queer Eye for the Gay Guy.
 
It wasn't until recently during our last trip to Florida that I realized that full grown flamingos are actually quite large. They are as tall as me and I stand 5'5"!  If they come up close to you, as this one did, they can look you right in the eye.  I was standing on the sidewalk and this fellow below came up behind me and as I turned instinctively, I saw a determined prance as he continued to walk right up to me, face to face, expecting a handout of food.  He clearly had been panhandling a long time and was not shy.  This was somewhat intimidating to me even though they are gentle old souls when they caress your palm with their bill and they seem to have that exotic Avatar eye thing going on.  Click on the photo if you are brave enough and pass me that bag of bird food.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

On a past canoe ride off Long Boat Key in Florida my husband and I re-established a long ago pattern of behavior that we established in our early married years when we reached a remote beach (after we did the other things that newlyweds do on remote beaches ;-)).  


I am the poker and prodder and explorer and he is the fisherman.  Therefore, we found a small mangrove island with a tiny beach and he promptly off-loaded me with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and camera and he headed out to the open water to catch fish.  Which he did.  He caught a nice sized sea-trout for our dinner that night.

Above against the far shoreline in the middle of the photo, that tiny white dot is the husband in canoe. (You can click on the photo if you do not believe me ;-).)

In the meantime I perused the graveyard of whelks that covered the nearby ocean floor.  These are so skeleton-like you need to click on the photo for a fuller experience.  I even found a few nice whelks and horseshoe crabs (dead) to bring home for a memory.

Then I saw this little bronze flower drifting along with the current and I can tell you that trying to capture the photo of a jellyfish from the top of the water looking down is most challenging.  The jellyfish pumps, the waves push and distort and the photographer tries not to step on anything sharp or fall and drop the little camera.  Although I could not identify this species, it was not one with tendrils to sting.  I certainly did not pick him up to test.

So exotic and so primitive, this life form that drifts and goes with the flow of the earth on its constant journey.  Volcanoes in Iceland and hurricanes in Florida all leave him unimpressed as he goes with the slow evolutionary flow and not against the demanding current.

Ole' Blue Eyes

I don't know if cormorants actually have blue eyes. I was too lazy on this perfect spring morning to research eye color in water birds, but I was very intrigued to find the photo below while I was processing my Florida bird photos.  Perhaps his eyes are reflecting the water below?

Click on the photo for the Frank Sinatra view.  (In American culture the phrase 'Old Blue Eyes,' referred to a very popular singer of the 1950's, Frank Sinatra.)

Down the Chimney

While in Florida, back in February, I was able to get a few photos of the wood stork, Mycteria americana.  They have a face 'only a mother could love.'   They look gangling and awkward with their wrinkled neck, bald forehead and long bill, yet, they can balance rather well on the thin branches of the mangroves for long periods of time.

The old tale of storks bringing babies appears to have come out of Europe, perhaps initiated during the Victorian period of modesty in discussing the facts of life.


According to the Straightdope.com,  "They (storks) arrive just about nine months after Midsummer's Day, June 21, the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. This was a major festival in pagan Europe, a time for weddings as well as merrymaking well lubricated by fermented beverages. (After the arrival of Christianity the feast continued to be celebrated as Saint John's Day; the modern association of June with weddings may also be related to this festival.) The return of storks just as the progeny resulting from summer revels put in their appearance would not have gone unnoted."


These birds are also seem tolerant of human activity and nest on the roofs of houses in Europe.  Children were led to believe that the baby, like Santa, came down the chimney.  


Click on the photos, of course, for a closer look at this unusual bird.

Birds of a Feather

The most intriguing of the birds in Florida for me were the snowy egrets with their wispy plumage.  They were like entire balls of white cloud or dancing threads.  These birds almost met their demise when women's vanity demanded hats with the exotic decor of real bird feathers and eventually whole birds were stuffed and placed on their heads like some weird homage to hunting.  Hundreds of these awkward looking delicate creatures would be killed in a single day!  That was when mankind felt that everything on this earth was his domain and it would all last forever.  Lesson still being learned!

For more information on the demise of birds brought about so that women could wear stylish hats you can check this link or for a chronological history of this craziness go here.  And if you have the stomach for how entire birds looked when killed and placed on womens' heads go here.  Fur, feathers and skin...what a fix we were in!

Happy Feet

I have nothing intelligent to say about this anhinga.  The photos are not great and there is no excuse for that because these birds (who do not have natural water repellent) must dry their wings when they come out of the water which results in them sitting very still for long periods of time in the full sun on branches.  Even an amateur can get a decent photo so what is my excuse?


Just, for some reason, this fellow looked so hopelessly happy and goofy that I had to post about him today.  Must be the brief spring that danced through our yard a few days ago.  Click on the photos if you do not believe me.

A Collection of Some of the Little Guys

I took hundreds of bird photos but will share the smallest of them.

Just a collection of photos of the forest birds in Florida that we spotted on our hikes and canoe trips.  Above a catbird.

Kingfishers

Snow Plover?

Least Grebe

Painted Bunting at the Corkscrew Swamp feeder
(For a closer view, you may wish to click on the photos.)

More Florida Birds

We were happy to see this Florida osprey.  He looked thinner than our mid-Atlantic fish hawks and whiter, but perhaps he was a migrant and we just didn't recognize him in his warmer wardrobe.  The hurricane that passed through a few years ago managed to destroy large sections of mangrove which left dead branch perches everywhere for these regal birds.

We paddled by this yellow crowned night heron, but he did not look  happy.  I hope that it was just the cold and windy weather that made him look out of sorts.  (Not that he was so crabby hungry!) The yellow on the forehead explains how is named which you can see more clearly if you click on the photo---I did not reduce the pixels.  He is supposed to be most active in the nighttime, but we saw quite a few during the daylight hours along the edge of the mangrove looking for crabs, frogs and fish.

The Hell I Can!

There was an abundance of Pelicans in Florida during my last visit. The bait fish were also abundant swimming in balls of motion close to the sea walls. These large and awkward looking birds spent the entire afternoon diving clumsily into the water and filling their mouths with scoops of little fish. It was not unusual to see small collisions when three birds decided to dive into the same small area as in the third photo above. They are the air-clowns of the tropics.

Catching Oysters

On my recent trip to Florida I was able for the very first time in my life to see an American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus) in the wild. These photos (with my point and shoot) are not very good, but considering I was not too close, my skill level is wanting, and also I did not want to disturb them, it is the best that can be expected. That bright colored bill is so strong that it is used it to pry open clams, oysters and other shellfish.

This bird is supposed to be in my area of the mid-Atlantic, but I had to travel all the way to Florida to get this shot.