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.

Leapin' Lizards and Feathered Friends

This is a Cuban Brown Anole or curly tailed lizard! Supposedly he and his friends came over from Cuba during one of the fierce hurricanes. These were all over the patio of the restaurant in Chokoloskee Florida. This was where we stopped for lunch on our visit to the SW portion of the Everglades.

This is the above anole showing his "dew lap" trying to assert his maleness!! Someone had to tell me what was happening here -- this is a small lizard and I hadn't ever seen this behavior before!





The first stop in our tour was the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. Even though we were only an hour south of Ft. Myers, I really felt like I was in the tropics today! This was one of many spiderwebs crusted with dew we saw in the early morning.




Later in the day, we visited Big Cypress National Preserve and saw this very successful cormorant with their catch!

Another stop in Chololoskee was this old general store (Smallwood) and post office looking very much like it did 70 years ago. I very much enjoyed looking at the Seminole embroidery. displayed there!

I do love bougainvillea and there was a lot of it I spotted today in all different colors. This was a pink/orange variety.

This was an amazing set of alligators we almost ran into at Fakahatchee. We saw what we thought were palm fronds laying across our side of the road. Upon closer inspection, it was a 8 foot alligator who was wondering across the street with his smaller friend.
Up front and personal with the above alligator -- not too close though!!

Another little green heron we ran into along the way.

This one is hard to see but it is the first time I have seen an owl in the wild -- it is a Barred Owl and I even spotted it first!

This is another of my favorite birds -- the Wood Stork. We saw several of these today doing all sorts of things including one who was trying to eat a wriggling yellow snake. This fellow was just sitting in a tree -- I hadn't seen one in a tree before. Blends in with his background pretty effectively I think.


This is a strangler fig. It grows around another tree and they are really interesting looking!

This is a Tri-Colored Heron. It looks a lot like the larger Great Blue Heron.

This was a particularly handsome Anhinga. These look a bit like their cousins the cormorants. Generally (but certainly not always) you see the Anhingas where there is fresh water and cormorants near the salt water. We saw them freely intermingling today. The Anhinga is also called the "piano key bird" because of their striking wing patterns.

It was a very full day and we saw many more birds but my pictures were not the best!! If you look at my sister's blog, I am sure you will see her perspective on the day!

This was one of many Red Shouldered Hawks we saw today. They are very common here and of course we see them at home.

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.

Shorebirds....

Each day I get up early, camera in hand and go to the beach for a long walk, hoping to pick up a few shells and take pictures of a few shorebirds. At first all the birds looked alike, but slowly I can differentiate the different types.

This is one of the more common shorebirds -- the Willet. It is in the sandpiper family. He has long legs and a long beak and is easy to spot.

It was very rainy and windy yesterday and I was surprised to see an osprey around in the back sitting on one of the dock posts. Usually they are high on a post or on top of a tree.

This I believe is a semi-palmated plover. We used to get plovers all the time in our yard when we lived in Batavia NY. He has a very distinctive collar.

This I believe is a Ruddy Turnstone. He is a relatively small bird with the bib in front.

A Snowy Egret visited the pool yesterday while I was there. Note his black legs, beak and bright yellow feet. The other night I saw Cattle Egrets and they were a bit smaller and had yellow beaks as opposed to the black beak of the Snowy Egret.

I am an inveterate reader of mysteries and a series I have enjoyed is the Doc Ford series by Randy Wayne White, a Ft. Myers native. Although the books are not what I normally would like, his passion for this area of SW Florida is evident. Last night I made my husband, sister and her husband go to to the Doc Ford Rum Bar and Grill in Ft. Myers. I had no idea whether the food was any good or not but White lends his name to the establishment and I had enjoyed the books so much. It was a very pleasant surprise as the food was rated excellent by all four of us and definitely a place we wanted to which we wanted to return! My fried shrimp were easily the best I have ever had and the other three said that their fish was cooked perfectly. From my husband, that is saying something!!

Between the Raindrops...

Despite the rain, I went out for a walk this morning and saw the elusive Magnificent Frigatebird. Their wingspan is so long, they can't land on the ground but have to land up higher so they have space to spread their wings and take off. This is a female who has the whitish area in the chest. The male has a bright red pouch in the same area which he puffs out to impress the ladies. The picture isn't great as it was pretty far away (with a male but you couldn't see the red patch) and it was still raining so to save the camera.... It is easy to identify them by the shape of their wings and the length!

My boys just watching for dinner. Note the light gold on their heads. During the breeding season, they have a very striking gold head. (I just LOVE pelicans.)

Yesterday morning in a slight respite from the rain, I went down to the beach for a short walk and was treated to frolicking dolphins! They were in quite shallow and were riding the waves and generally having a good time.


This is our everpresent egret who decided I was no threat and stopped by the pool for a drink of fresh water. I suspect this is the same one hunting for skinks the day before!

The weather has been pretty awful. We all decided it was because we hadn't assigned anyone responsibility for insuring good weather! The skies are bound and determined to make up the 16 inch rain deficit in the time we are here. We have never had serious rain when down here (well maybe one day a year), but all it does is rain..... Supposedly the weather gets better tomorrow and stays that way for awhile. Hopefully there will be lots of shore and wading birds for my trip down to the Everglades early next week!

I did pick up quite a few nice but smaller shells this morning on a long walk in the intermittent rain!

This Year's Florida Goals

Actually there are two goals this year for my visit (besides having a wonderful Florida time). My first is to be able to identify all the shore birds as I walk down the beach. Then and only then will I be able to identify the scarcer varieties. Sounds easy but it isn't! The birds come in breeding, non-breeding, male and female plummage as well as totally different juvenile plummage! Since it isn't the breeding season for the most part, one variable is eliminated. My second goal is to identify more of the bivalve shells (clams to most of you). Clam is just too generic a category and last year I started to realize that as I identified several different types of clam shells that I had collected. The "shells for dummies" kind of books don't do a really good job of differentiating so back to the library.

I am also hoping to see a Sandhill Crane and the Burrowing Owl. My sister knows where these hang out so hopefully I can see these in person!

This is an adult Laughing Gull which is one of the most common in Florida. This is not a huge gull and has a black bill. He has a little greyish part on the head. In the spring, this is black and he is a very striking bird. They also are the ones that make that hideous raucous sound, hence their names.
This is an immature laughing gull. Note how much more mottled the coat is but still has the black beak. He stole this fish treat from two turkey vultures which are futher down in the blog.





This is a Ring-Billed Gull which is tied for the above gull as the most common on the beach! This is an adult bird. Note the black ring on the beak which can be larger or smaller!

This is an immature Ring Billed Gull --also mottled like the laughing gull immature bird!

These are Sanderlings which are a small sandpiper which darts in and out of the water. They are very small and usually run in groups.

These are the two turkey vultures who were swooping over my husband (trying to tell him something maybe?) and then settled for a fish head on the beach. There are two kinds of vultures down here -- the turkey vulture with the red faces and then the black vultures who don't have the red.

This was an upturned palm tree hollowed out by the water where the sea had intruded on the beach.

This was looking up at the coconut palm in the front yard of the condo where we are staying.