Birds, Birds, Birds And Birds

I drove down to the Venice Rookery this morning to see how things are coming along. It's still pretty early in the season, so there weren't a million birds there yet, but the great blue herons are actively beginning to nest. I spotted at least one bird that seemed to be sitting on eggs, but most of them were still working hard to build nests. Check out the pair above. You can see the blue around their eyes, which indicates it's mating time.

I just couldn't get enough pictures of this pair.

It can take an awful lot of trips back and forth to build a nest. That gives me ample opportunity to get pictures of these big guys in flight.

Back and forth, back and forth...

Who knew it took this much work to build a nest?

There were a few egrets beginning to nest as well, but not very many. Once the season gets into full swing, there will be as many of these guys as the herons.

There were also plenty of anhingas flying around, but I didn't see any that had begun to nest yet. The folks from Audubon were there with some high-powered scopes, and they reported seeing night herons and moorhens, but I couldn't see them through my 300mm lens. On a nearby pond, I saw a duck and a cormorant, so clearly the area is teeming with birds. Oh, there was a red-shoulder hawk in a pine tree nearby, I saw him fly in and heard his cries.

I watched this gator slowly float up to the island where all the birds were nesting. He nosed into a little opening where he hung out for a few minutes, then disappeared. Maybe ten minutes later, there was the sound of something hitting the branches in that area violently, then the cry of a bird, over and over again. Eventually, the noise ended. The twenty or so photographers at the rookery all raced over to that area, but nobody got a shot of anything. About a minute later, the gator came out of the same spot he'd entered, and slowly skulked away. Maybe the rookery isn't such a safe place to raise your kids after all.