Scream

No swimming, but only if you happen to be a Munch creation.

Kooky Kormorant

As I get older, I find that my eyebrows grow out much faster than they used to. Though I have to say I don't have it quite as bad as this guy, a cormorant permanently housed at Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary.  I guess it's that time of year when a male bird's fancy turns from fish to the lady birds, and strange changes take place that help to attract a suitable mate. All I can say that I'm glad it's not happening to me!

Tied Up

I went down to the beach last night to shoot the sunset, and while that didn't work out so well, I did see this little bird hopping around on the shore, eating this and that, just doing his thing. It wasn't until after I got home and looked at the pictures that I realized what poor shape he was in.One of his feet is completely gone, and the other one is twisted up in old fishing line.  This is why they have those disposal tubes for fishing line all over the place.  I hear people making fun of them, but this is what happens when we dispose of non-degradable items in an unsafe way.  I'm not entirely sure what type of bird this is, though.  I think it may be a ruddy turnstone.

Overhead

I love living in Florida! Where else in the USofA could you live (except maybe Hawaii) and see something like these guys in the McDonalds drive-thru?  Actually, I heard them first, then stuck my head out the window to see them on an overhead power line.  But there they were, and they were kind enough to wait until I pulled out the camera to take some pictures.  But they never hang around very long when they aren't camouflaged in some foliage.  They took off unexpectedly and I was only able to get a shot or two of them in the air.  Oh, these are Quaker Parakeets, they aren't native around here, but they have established wild colonies all over this part of Florida and points south.  They're really something to see.  It's really neat when a whole flock of them fly by, flashing those green wings at you up in the air, and the occasional red tailfeather.

You know what, I shot wild parrots in San Francisco once, so I guess I have to take back what I said about only in Florida and Hawaii.

Best Regards, Debby

As some of you may know, Florida has been getting pummeled for the better part of a week now by a poorly organized, slow-moving tropical system that was eventually named Debby.  We've gotten well over a foot of rain now, and while it seems to be letting up now, it's by no means over.  All that water has to go somewhere, and while much of it's been absorbed into the ground, a lot of it is standing around.  And for whatever reason, it's making a lot of birds very happy.  For the past two days, I've driven past a cow pasture near my house and there have been a couple of flocks of roseate spoonbills roaming around.  I don't see these guys very much, and sightings are very unpredictable, so when I saw a large number of them right near the road, I turned around, found a spot to park, grabbed the long lens, braved the flooded sidewalk and went shooting.  But being very shy birds, soon as the saw me they hightailed it for the far-off corner of the pasture.  But I got a couple of decent shots of them on the wing, heading away from me.  The one above is yesterday, the one below from just an hour or so ago.  The rain was nice enough to let up long enough for me to get some shots, but it's rained a bit since then.


Also of interest in the same field was a pair of tricolored herons, one a bit younger than the other, I think.  That's the mostly brown one above, and the darker one below I think is the older one.  Most of the ones I see around are darker, so I think that's the mature plumage.  It's the time of year where the babies are finally starting to turn their final adult colors, so that's why I think the one at the top is still slightly different colors, he's just a teenager.  Anyhow, both these guys had staked out a spot on the edge of the pasture where the water was flowing over the normally dry sidewalk, looking to see what hapless creatures were being swept up in the floodwaters, then eating them.  They were pretty mad at me because I was hanging out and trying to shoot them while they were working, and they eventually flew off in protest.  But I got some good pictures first.

Oh, and then there was this. I saw a disturbance out in the shallow water that I couldn't quite identify.  I finally spotted some fins and a tail, so I knew it was a fish and not a gator, but I still couldn't tell exactly what kind of fish.  They (I could tell it was three of something from the trails it was leaving on the surface) eventually got close enough to me that I could see down into the water, and it looked to be three garfish!  I would lot have expected that, but there they were, swimming around in the four or so inches of water covering this part of the pasture.  I'm pretty sure I could have grabbed them if I'd wanted to, but they have some nasty teeth in those big jaws.

Two Of A Kind

These two red-shouldered hawks were carrying on outside my window this afternoon something fierce. No idea why, but they were flying around, squawking, perching on a tree, then on a pole, one would fly in, then the other, then the first would fly off again. I don't think it was a mating thing, since it's the wrong time of year. I suspect maybe they are a couple of newly-fledged juveniles, out for a good time, getting a little exercise. I also spotted a couple more similar hawks in the air nearby at the same time, perhaps that was mommy and daddy. But whatever their backstory, it was neat to watch them right outside my window here. For a while they were much closer than this, on the same palm frond in fact, but this was the best picture I could get with both of them in the same frame.

Pretty In Pink

I almost never see roseate spoonbills when I'm out looking to shoot bird pictures. So I was quite surprised when I came across this one in a canal next to a busy park at the shuttle launch on Friday. He was going about his daily search for lunch, totally oblivious to the thousands of people hanging around waiting for the imminent launch. Good thing I had my long lens on.  FYI, those plain old white birds are white ibis.  Not nearly so exciting, but they help round out the picture, I think.

Testing

This is a test.  Hmmm, perhaps Blogger is now playing with Picasa again.  I shot this bald eagle this morning while on my way to the Earth Day celebration at Oscar Scherer State Park.  I drove around a corner and there he was, feasting on a roadkill armadillo.  I couldn't pull over fast enough, believe me.  I started shooting as soon as I got out of the car, but he flew off before I could get too close.  But then I noticed that there were two eagles feasting on the armadillo, and the second one didn't seem to pay me too much mind.  I was able to get within about thirty feet without spooking him, and even walk around to the side where the light was best.  With my long lens, I was able to get right up on him and crop out the road in the background.  Very, very cool.

Back At Work

Here's another shot of that hawk that hangs around at work sometimes. Here he's sitting on top of the power pole behind the building, looking back at me as if he didn't want his picture made. He must have decided shortly thereafter that he really didn't want me to take his picture, because he flew off and I didn't see him again anytime soon.

Sibling Rivalry

I'm still fighting with Blogger to try and get it to post pictures directly from Picassa. This one is acting like it's going to work, so perhaps I've fixed it. Maybe. Anyhow, I took this picture a couple of weekends ago at the Venice Rookery, a great place to spy on birds as they raise their young. In this case, it's a great blue heron with some loud youngsters. You can easily pick out the youngsters as they're the ones with the crazy haircuts. I guess all kids are the same across the different species.

Mutual Of Ernie's Wild Kingdom

Sometimes, you just get a lucky shot. I had waded into the water a short ways yesterday at Robinson Preserve to get a picture of an osprey. As I was shooting him, I heard some people in kayaks behind me describing some fins in the water, wondering if they were sharks or dolphins. Since I was in the water already, I hoped they were dolphins, and that turned out to be the case. The osprey flew away and I turned my attention to where these fins were, and suddenly the water just offshore seemed to explode with activity. I pointed my camera in the right direction and saw a couple of dolphin fins sticking up from the shallow water. I started tracking them and shooting, and this is what I got. Two dolphins were playing with some fish, sheepshead to be exact. As you can see in this shot, he's tossed the fish completely out of the water. Those two pelicans saw what was going on and were high-tailing it to the spot to try and get some free lunch out of the deal. I kept shooting the dolphins for as long as I could, but this was the only time I caught them with a fish out of the water. It was a pretty impressive sight.  I'd post more pictures, but Picasa still isn't working with Blogger.  Must be a problem on my end.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't think I've ever seen this many turkeys together. Right alongside the trail on afternoon at Circle B Bar Preserve, there they were. I couldn't even get them all into one shot. There are more of them to the left of this frame.

This was as close as I could get to them, and that was with a 400mm lens. I tried to give them a wide berth and get in front of them, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me.

Before I could get around them, they took off running, and just a second or two after I took this shot, they were airborne and gone.

Red-Shoulder

I may as well throw in a red-winged blackbird for you while I'm posting bird pictures. Nice light on this one, you can see the black feathers quite nicely. Sometimes they just show up as black blobs with a red and gold spot, but this one came out nice. Again, from the Circle B Bar Preserve in Lakeland.

Snow Bird

Yes, we have lots of pelicans in Florida, but not like this, or at least not all of the time. Most of the year, Florida is populated by brown pelicans, but during the cold months, we get large flocks of these white pelicans down from up north. They seem to prefer the fresh water, but you will occasionally find them in salt water. Brown pelicans are the opposite, they like the salt, but sometimes you'll see some inland where the water is fresh. They're just all mixed up somehow. As you can see, the white ones aren't entirely white, they've got some black accents under the wings that gives them a distinctive look when they're flying. And that bump on the beak is some sort of sex thing. The males get it during breeding season, and then it goes away. Perhaps the females find it attractive.

Caw!

It's really hard to get a good picture of a crow. They're all black and the exposure rarely comes out correct. I think this one is pretty good. The iridescence in the feathers is a nice touch. But what can I say, it's still just a common crow. Or is it? I think a crow has a stubbier, darker beak. What does that make this? I'm thinking it's a grackle, a boat-tailed grackle to be specific, a male boat-tailed grackle to be even more specific. So many birds, so little difference.

Little Bit o' Tern

Hailing again from the Circle Bar B Preserve in Lakeland, this is a bittern. You don't see these guys very often, yet in just a few feet of trail, I spotted three of them, getting decent shots of two. Hard to tell from the pictures, but these guys are frozen in place, hoping that you won't notice them in the weeds. Well, I say frozen. They will actually sway back and forth a little, trying to mimic the motion of the weeds in the wind. It sort of reminds me of a house cat that thinks it's hidden, but selective breeding has caused it not to be very well camouflaged. Anyhow, just another bird in what must seem like an endless parade of them around here. And yes, there are more to come.

M R Ducks

Trolling though all the photos I took last month but never shared, I'm into the ones from Circle B Bar Preserve in Lakeland, Florida. More birds up there than you can shake a stick at, but I gave it the old college try. These ducks were standing in formation on a dead tree for some reason. You never can really tell what's going through a ducks mind. But I thought it made a neat picture.

Hoodie

Here. Don't say I never gave you a picture of a hooded merganser. At least I think that's what this was. I spotted a couple of them in the retention pond of a movie theater near my condo, so I whipped out the camera and took a couple of shots. The light was fading fast, and the puffy-headed ducks were paddling fast to get away from me and my camera. I got off a few shots and this was the best one. There are so many different types of ducks out there, I can't even pretend to be able to identify them all. If anyone out there can tell me if I'm correct in my identification, I'd appreciate it.

Flutter And Hold

At the same time I shot those oystercatchers, I also was keeping an eye on this tern as he hunted for some fish in the shallow water near the sandbar I was on. He'd hover in the air for a couple of seconds, something that few birds can do as effectively, and if he saw something, he'd dive in for it. I didn't catch him with anything in his beak, but I do recall he finally got something after he'd moved beyond the reach of my telephoto lens.

It was pretty amazing how he could change the pitch of his wings to hold himself in one spot as he hunted. Maybe not quite a graceful as a humming bird, but better than a lot of other species.

You could tell when he spotted something, his attention was suddenly locked on to something that was about to get eaten.

In this shot, you can get a small sense of where I was at, although the telephoto lens distorts the distance a great deal. That's the Sunshine Skyway bridge in the background, with the city of St. Petersburg rising out of the water behind it. I think it's maybe 9 miles to the bridge from where I was at, and twenty or more town. But the long lens makes it look as if you can reach out and grab it. The white dots in the water are birds gathered on another sandbar out in the bay.

Dig That Crazy Beak

I am not even sure what kind of birds these are, but with a long orange beak like that, they shouldn't be too hard to look up. I ran into these guys in Tampa Bay, just off shore from Robinson Preserve, but on a different day from many of the other bird pictures I've shown you this evening. It was low tide, and I'd wandered out onto a sandbar that had formed around an inlet that feeds some of the salt marshes in the preserve. I happened to see these guys fly up, shot a few pictures, then they flew away as quickly as they arrived.

So a quick search of the internets tells me that this is an oystercatcher. Now we know. I don't know that I've seen one of these in the wild before, yet here were three of them. Actually, you can't see all three of them in any of these pictures, but there were three. Perhaps they were just migrating through, and I got lucky in catching them. Perhaps they're really common, and I've just missed them.