Goin' Mobile

Are you tired of all the bird pictures yet? Well, here's something I've been meaning to share since my trip to DC in September of last year, but I never got around to it. This is a large Calder mobile in the National Gallery of Art, the East Wing. I missed this on my first trip up in May, but I caught it on the second trip. Pretty impressive, and I don't know if you can tell from these poor photos, but it moves!

Evidently, it's so well balanced, the breeze from the AC and any stray air current from open doors and blowhard grad students make it spin.

I asked a docent if it ever gets stuck and he looked at me strangely. Surely something like this is supported by some large bearings, and those bearings must occasionally seize up. But he said no, it never stops. Oh, well.

Ducks And Ducks And Ducks And Ducks

As I mentioned yesterday, I don't normally pay too much attention to ducks. But these guys were too obnoxious to ignore. They circled around the Venice Rookery a dozen times before finally settling down. And then as soon as anyone disturbed them in even the slightest way, they'd take off and circle another dozen times. At least it allowed me to get a few good pictures of them in flight.






And this is what they look like on the ground. Mere seconds after this shot, they took to the air again and circled for another 20 minutes. And did I mention they didn't circle silently? No, of course not, they quacked their little duck hearts out the whole time.  Anybody want to tell me what sort of ducks these are?  Here in Florida, we're on the migration paths for so many different birds, it takes an ornithologist to keep them all straight.

The Baby Owl

I showed you some pictures yesterday of a great horned owl that's taken up residence in an old osprey nest near the Venice Rookery. Well, I was assured that there was something in the nest, but when I first arrived there was nothing to be seen.

About half an hour later I walked back, and this time there was indeed what looked like a small ball of fuzz with eyes peering over the edge of the nest. Sure enough, it was an owlet. This was my first time seeing a baby owl, so I was pretty excited.

I watched him for a long time, and eventually he stood up and showed us more of himself. He's a lot bigger than I first imagined.

But eventually he got tired of putting on a show for the assembled photographic multitude. He ducked back down and all you could see was the tip of his head. I guess babies need a lot of sleep. And perhaps they're nocturnal, just like their parents.

Breakfast Madness

Next time you feel like your kids are pestering you to death for something, some back and look at this post. From the Venice Rookery on Saturday, this is an adult great blue heron trying to feed two almost-grown babies. I guess they are still too young for solid food, so she's got to regurgitate some food for them. And they don't want to wait for that to happen.

Oh, the horror!

I almost can't look at this.

It's like the two of them are fighting over who gets to attack Mommy with their pointy bill.

And I guess the farther you jam mommy's beak down your throat, the less likely you are to spill any of her nutritious vomit.

Either Mommy can only take so much at a time, or she has to reprime the vomit pump once in a while.

But these babies just aren't going to wait for that to happen.

Mmmm, good. Regurgitated fish guts!

Mommy needs another breather.

But that's just not going to happen with these two hungry brats.

These shots are all in the order I took them, but I didn't include all of them. Usually it devolved into a mass of necks, beaks and wings where you can't hardly make out who's who or what's what. So these are just the cream of the crop where you can actually see what's happening.

And you thought your kids had bad table manners?

This is just getting bad...

I think Mommy has had just about all of this that she can take. Remember, she's been feeding these two for almost a month now, and it's probably been like this the whole time. I think both parents tend the nest, so my saying Mommy all the time may be misleading. Imagine a single parent having to raise two of these little brats. 50% of the time is more than enough!

Yep, Mommy has had her fill. With little warning, she turns around and heads for a nice safe tree far away from her not-yet-flying youngsters. She never even looks back.

I'm sure she's thinking about how pretty soon they'll be flying on their own. Then they'll follow her and want even more food. And maybe she's thinking about migrating to some nice adults-only island where there are no baby great blue herons.

A Red-Headed Bird

I think I'm getting carried away with my little theme here, but this is another bird from Cockroach Bay Road. This is a little sapsucker, or woodpecker if you prefer. Pretty sure this isn't the only time I've shown you one of these.

A Black Bird (W/ Red)

This was the second red-winged blackbird I'd shot in as many days. This is another of the birds I spotted on Cockroach Bay Road this past Sunday. I guess if you stand in any one place long enough, you're bound to see something. Actually, I wasn't there that long, it just turned out to be a really good spot.

I didn't notice it on the bird from Saturday, but this guy had distinct brown marks on his back. I don't think those are an artifact from the lighting, but maybe. He certainly had some nice, bright colors on his shoulders, and it was always visible, at least as long as I was watching.

A Red Bird

For an overcast, dreary day, Sunday turned out some nice pictures. I spotted this cardinal up on a power line overhead while shooting in Cockroach Bay, and shot some nice pictures, even though the sky was ugly.

I didn't notice how his tail was moving until I went to post these pictures. I guess some of that is how he keeps his balance up on that tiny wire while singing so loudly.

Looks like he's having a bad hair day, too. Oh, well.

Down To The Roots

I always like to shoot mangrove roots, but the pictures rarely come out decent. I thought these shots came out pretty well, but I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's because of the overcast skies, keeping direct sun from throwing dark shadows that can throw a picture off.  Maybe it's just the shape and location of the trees that let you get a nice view of the structure of the root system.  I don't know, I just take pictures.

I shot these where Cockroach Bay Road dead ends into Cockroach Bay near Ruskin, Florida. Cockroach Bay is a small part of Tampa Bay, and there really isn't much to see there from land. Maybe I need to get a boat so I can get out in the water where the really cool pictures are.  I'll start saving my money tomorrow.

The sharp-eyed among you will notice that these three shots are all iin the same spot, each zoomed in quite a bit more than the last.  Look close at the last one and you can see a small crab on one of the roots to the right of center.  He's actually there in all of the pictures, but hard to spot.

Yellow & Black

Do these two birds look the same to you? Not exactly. Well, they're both the same type of bird, a yellow crowned night heron, just one is younger than the other. I believe the one above is just growing into his adult plumage, and he'll eventually look like the one below.  When they are little, the feathers look totally different, and I can still see some of that coloration and patterning in the one above, but I can also see a lot of the adult appearance in him.  And with a little luck, even his crab dinner will get bigger like the adult below.

Springtime

The azaleas are in bloom around here in Florida, so I guess that means Spring is here. I should get out and shoot some of the huge displays of these things going crazy around here. I shot these little groups at the Gamble Mansion on Sunday, seconds before it started raining.

A Full Moon

I guess the moon went full this morning around 2 am. So I got busy and took this picture before work around 7. Not too bad.

Down Low

I took this photo of one of the hangars at Macdill Air Force Base after Airfest 2010. I was laying down on the tarmac with the camera flat on the ground. I thought it was kind of a neat shot. From what I read, those hangars date back to the thirties, actually predating WWII. Pretty impressive structures considering the planes back in those days weren't exactly our modern birds.

Peppers

This was the field across the road from where I saw the snapping turtle on Sunday. It was overgrown, but from the looks of it, they had been growing some sort of chili pepper out there. I'd never seen a field of chili peppers before. I think most of the fields in the area are used for tomatoes. After all, Ruskin is the tomato capitol of Florida, if not the world. But those definitely aren't dried tomatoes out there.

Oh, Snap!

Here's another new critter from this past weekend, this time on Sunday in a drainage ditch among the fields of Ruskin. My buddy saw him crossing the road and went to help so he didn't get run over. Usually turtles in the road are gophers or some other common species, but not this time. This was a small snapping turtle, somebody you do not want to mess with. Get anything within a few inches of those jaws and it's going to wind up getting chopped in two. These guys don't fool around!

The only way to get this guy out of the road was to push him quickly or kick him with your foot. Anything gentler would result in getting bit. So that's how he wound up with grass all over his face as he was firmly nudged across the road and onto the shoulder.

Here's a nice overall view where you can see how well armored this guy is. Not only is he mean, but if someone does get the better of him, they're unlikely to be able to make much of a meal out of him.

Another butt shot (what that, three today?), showing the long tail and the serrated edge of the upper carapace. This guy means business. We eventually got him down into the ditch beside the road, and he immediately dug himself into the mud and disappeared. And there was only a couple of inches of water in the ditch!