Time to Leave This Beautiful Place....

Ah, my little sister Gail with the brilliant blue Florida sunshine! She gets to stay for several more months and I have to go back on Tuesday....She and her dear husband Bill have made this stay very, very enjoyable even though we are not physically at their condo! They have driven us around, fed us and showed us all sorts of birds!

We now know to go to Ding Darling first thing in the morning. We were there right after it opened at 7. The white pelicans were feeding. Brown pelicans feed by diving from great heights straight down while white pelicans swim in a group pushing their beaks down into the water to get food.


We saw a lot of roseate spoonbills very early. After about fifteen minutes, they had all disappeared into the mangroves!


I took this one to show the difference in size between the brown pelicans which are pretty good sized and their much, much larger cousin, the white pelican.


I believe these are two red breasted mergansers in their non-breeding plumage.


Both Gail and I have had better luck shelling on Lovers Key than Sanibel and today was no exception. There were some different shells on Sanibel and they certainly were piled up in huge heaps in places but not a lot of interest! I did pick up a number of nice apple murex as well as some scallop shells and calico clams.

These were the blue winged teals again at Ding Darling. We saw quite a few this morning! I believe the lone fellow in front is a Lesser Yellowlegs.

Power Shelling!

We had some ferocious winds and waves yesterday in Ft. Myers so my sister and I decided that a trip to Lovers Key to go shelling was in order so bright and early....

Of course since we were shelling, we decided we shouldn't bring our cameras which is always a huge mistake. Of course as we walked over to the beach, we saw two Roseate Spoonbills that were literally feet away from us. Gail scurried back to the car to get the cameras while I kept the "tourists" quiet as they crossed the bridge. The two spoonbills moved on but not far enough away that we couldn't at least get some pictures. We had originally planned to go to Ding Darling this morning just to see these magnificent birds. No trip to Ft. Myers Beach is complete without a couple of pictures of these birds! In this shot, they were heading into the mangroves and they completely disappeared from sight a few minutes later.


Later after we went shelling (and did pretty well at that), we stopped by another pond and found two more spoonbills. The one on the right is the more mature with the red on the top of the wing. The other is probably a more juvenile version.

This was the resident osprey who was nest building while we were there.

Now, these strange shapes were in the shallows of the low tidal area. They were very symmetrical in shape and I suspect they are some sort of anemone but don't know this for a fact. The varied colors seem to support the idea though.

Imagine my surprise when I walked out to sit by the pool and saw this scene -- a turkey vulture hanging out with the Great Blue that seems to frequent the back yard!

Here is a closeup of the buzzard. If you double click you can see quite a bit of facial detail but he is still a little spooky looking!!

A Visit to Corkscrew Swamp -- an Audubon Sanctuary

We got an early start for us and got to my sister's condo so we could venture down to the Corkscrew Swamp which is about an hour south of here. At my sister's condo, they have this beautiful Hong Kong Orchid tree which I just LOVE -- they really look like orchids!

We didn't have high expectations for finding too much down at Corkscrew but it is a lovely 2 mile walk through the swamp on a nice boardwalk. This is an epiphyte that is ready to bloom (which I won't get to see). These are the "air" plants you see in all the swampy areas.


This is a Yellow Crowned Night Heron. I have always seen these on my trips down but until this trip the Black Crowned Night Heron had eluded me. That was all I saw down here this trip until I saw this Yellow Crowned one!



I loved all the different lichen that were on this old tree branch. This is a Cypress swamp.

This is a Black Crowned Night Heron -- they are not as pretty as the Yellow Crowned IMHO.


This is a Black and White Warbler which I hadn't seen before. I took the picture and identified it when I got home. Sometimes you just have to blow them up!!



We saw a few anhingas and I couldn't resist this handsome male with his piano key wings.

This is a Ruddy Daggertail. He is facing down which confused me before I looked at the picture!

I now know that this is a Swamp Lily. I had seen this down in the Everglades as well.

I don't know the name of this flower but I hadn't seen it before or anywhere else.

This is a Green Anole. We see the brown ones all the time skittering around but Warren saw this bright bright green one. He was very striking and I took lots of pictures of him.

After visiting Corkscrew, we drove down to Naples as Warren and I hadn't been there before. We went out on the City pier to see the boats. It is definitely more upscale than Fort Myers.

This is Bill on the left and my dh Warren on the right.

Travelin' Tuesday Morning!

Well my sister and I made an early start (for me but halfway through the day for her) at 7 with plans to go shelling at Lover's Key which is a small series of islands south of Ft. Myers Beach. As the park didn't open until 8 in the morning, we took a side trip first through a very small kind of private preserve on the southern end of Ft. Myers Beach. I don't know whether it has a formal name or not. We also took a circuit around the Catholic Monastery in search of the fabled scarlet ibis which has been spotted there (no, we didn't see one). What a treat!!!

This was at a small pond behind the monastery and was a series of trees with probably 25 anhingas all appearing to be females! They have the brownish necks while the males are solid black.
I believe this is a Wilson's Plover. I know it is a plover and the markings on the Kildeer which is looks most like are much stronger.

This is a Semi-Palmated Sandpiper and is bigger than the plovers.

This is the Semi-Palmated Plover. I have seen these quite often on the beach.

This is a Kildeer which is also a plover. We used to get these in our yard in Batavia, NY. They are a very noisy bird!

After wandering around this small salt water marsh where we saw all the plovers, we headed over to the beach as we saw some dolphins feeding near the shore. This was a dolphin that was pushing a school of fish up onto the beach -- he probably ended up in about six inches of water just feet from us. I hadn't even noticed the pelican in front!

This was a lovely Tri-Color Heron that we saw as we were heading back up to the car. He was in the tidal pools. They are about the same size as the Little Blue Heron but have more distinctive markings and are whitish underneath.

These are Mottled Ducks (what my sister called Florida Ducks) which are very common around here. I had seen them before but hadn't identified them.

This was a particularly nice reddish egret that we also saw in this shore area. It was a lovely side trip to say the least.

Next we headed down to Lover's Key for some shelling! It is always good there. The thermometer on the car measured 93 in the sun and we hear we set the country's record for the warmest temp! The day was glorious though and the water warm and clear.
This is my stash from collecting shells down at Lovers Key. I had to give up after two hours as I was still suffering some dehydration from the flu I had a couple of days previously. You can see conchs and olives and most of the common shells found down here! I never tire of collecting shells and neither does my sister Gail. It is in our genes for sure!!
On our way out of Lover's Key, we stopped one last time to see if we could spot manatees as I had never seen one! Gail spotted some down the way so we drove down and watched them for ten minutes! They were quite active although on the other side of the canal. Nonetheless, I did manage a few good pictures. I loved this one as he (or she) looks like a person in a back float somehow in this shot -- not a very attractive person I might add!! Some canoes came by and the manatees disappeared deep under water and out of sight. It was quite a thrill!!

I couldn't end the blog without including this picture of my elusive Belted Kingfisher. Of course he chose to come around closely again when my camera was by the pool, but not me. Luckily my dear husband had the presence of mind to take some shots. This really shows the essence of the Kingfisher -- doesn't he look fearsome?

More Fine Feathered Friends

With my dear husband returned to Rochester for a couple of horrid days and Gail's husband working on his planes, my sister and I decided to take a walk on the boardwalk in one of my favorite places down here -- Six Mile Cypress Slough. It is about a mile and a half through a beautiful swampy area with no bugs -- the critters take care of all those annoying mosquitoes. Here are the ibis coming home to roost for the night in the trees around one of the larger ponds.

I just think the swamp itself is beautiful with its wonderful cypress trees speckled with lichen. Double clicking on this one will give you a better view.

A bunch of turtles were enjoying the sunshine all lined up on this old log.

There were several ibis up in trees as we were walking through the swamp. The pointy leaved plant in the background is an epiphyte which is an "air plant".

This was a lovely male anhinga drying its wings.



Today was our third day with considerable fog in the morning. I like the Great Blue Heron with the fuzzy foggy background. The weather has been really peculiar this year but anything is better than the cold and snow in Rochester!

This morning the usual ibis were digging in the neighboring lawn. The one in front is really a white ibis but a juvenile. One of the others was all white with just a touch of brown on its head -- probably a year older than this fellow.

There has been an everpresent Belted Kingfisher who has frustrated my attempts to get a good closeup. The only time he came even remotely close, I had left the camera inside (of course). This was about as good as I have been able to get and you can certainly see his white collar.

This is one of several everpresent small birds which land on the orange tree. I believe it is a Palm Warbler as they are supposedly common down here and he twitches his tail up and down frequently.

A New Tern of Events

Well, I hoped to see the different varieties of terns today but did see two of the more frequent visitors -- the Royal Tern and the Sandwich Tern. My favorite is the Black Skimmer but I didn't see any this morning.


This is the royal tern which has the black tuft and a golden beak.


These are the sandwich terns which are a bit smaller. They have a black beak and also a black tuft.

The cormorants were again posing this morning. You can see that sun has finally arrived back in Florida!

This is the Semi-Palmated Plover which I saw yesterday as well.

This is the Black Bellied Plover which was a new one to me this morning. My sister says that there are five varieties of plover on the beaches here. Hopefully I will be able to identify all of them!

I think this is some kind of warbler but not a good enough picture to identify.

I believe this is a Pine Warbler but I may be wrong. He was bright yellow underneath.

In keeping with the theme of the last two days, the ibis decided to take a drink today from the pool but must have thought two was safer than one. None of these birds seems to mind me sitting there at all -- very brazen.