Boat trip in Tampa Bay - Skywatch Friday

Hubby getting the boat ready. He didn't realize he had a visitor sitting by the lamp watching him. This is the first time I've seen an egret get so close. I guess he heard the boat motor and thought we were coming back with some fish.

Ibis and 2 laughing gulls fighting over a dead horseshoe crab.

Spotted sandpiper bobbing up and down the beach. He stayed pretty far away.

Osprey looking for lunch. That's the Bucs football stadium behind the airport parking deck in the background. We were on the other side of the bay.

Mallards swimming by.

Osprey catching a fish in the bay.

I noticed this bulldozer tearing down mangroves along the water.  I thought it was now illegal to do that. Not sure what they're doing.

Tampa from across the bay.

We took our boat out recently and heading for a small lagoon near the St. Petersburg/Clearwater airport. It's usually quiet there and we rarely see any other boats. There's a small beach there and we call it the "horseshoe crab graveyard". The beach is always littered with dead horseshoe crabs. I don't know why they end up here. Maybe the tide and the way the waves are flowing. Sometimes there are shorebirds hanging around. We anchored and swam over to the beach and walked around. Although, as soon as we start swimming onto shore the shorebirds take off. I hate scaring them away from their small piece of paradise. Last time we were there it was still a little cold and the water near the beach was full of stingrays so I stayed in the boat. I'm all for the stingray shuffle but when there's not even an inch to put your feet down I get creeped out. We stayed for a while and watched the small commuter planes land and take off at the small airport. I was a little disappointed we didn't seen any dolphins or manatees this trip.

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Ducks are frisky at Lake Morton

The ducks are still frisky here in central Florida. A couple of weekends ago I stopped by Lake Morton in downtown Lakeland hoping to find baby swans. No baby swans yet but I'm going to keep looking. The ducks were busy chasing each other. We already have a lot of duck families with babies, some almost full grown. By the way the ducks were carrying on though, I think there are still more babies to be born. It was funny to watch the ducks chasing each other. Although in the first picture, I think the white duck was actually chasing the male mallard away.

Check out more birds at 

Springtime Ducks

Today was the first off day that I had in a long while that was sunny and not pouring down rain. I had to get out and do some birding. The water is still very high just about everywhere, conditions that are very favorable for good water birds.

There were many coots walking around on the grass at the beach when I arrived at the lake. There were also a good deal of people walking around with dogs, but luckily for a change they were all on leashes. The birds only seemed to pay moderate attention to them.

Scanning the large flock of coots revealed about a dozen or so Bufflehead mixed in.

Male Bufflehead

The males were displaying and chasing one another.

And the females were uninterested of course...

After watching the Buffleheads, I rescanned the flock and found my first of the year/season Blue-winged Teal!

Blue-winged Teal

One decided to start swimming towards to me!

The teal came all the way up to the shore and stared me down, as if to say "I know I am a handsome duck, so quit staring at me!"

I preceded to walk along the shore, looking for birds and rescanning the flock of coots. I noticed 3 Bald Eagles flying high above the lake. Also, my FOS Double-crested Cormorants and Bonapartes Gulls. Scoping out the lake revealed a huge raft of ducks consisting mostly of scaup and bufflehead.

A group of highschool rowers started to pile into the park, so I decided to head for the car. That is when I noticed this sad sight:

A Ring-billed Gull with a lure stuck in its neck. There really wasn't anything that I could do, as the bird spooked and starting swimming to the middle of the lake. This is why fishermen should try to prevent the snapping of line as much as possible. However, I didn't have to end the day on this sad note. As I was getting near the car, my FOS Tree Swallows came out of nowhere and were flying all around me. Spring is here!

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Duck, duck....(no goose) - Skywatch Friday

Black bellied whistling ducks flying by.

Black bellied whistling duck staring at me. What is it about these ducks that are so cute?

The marsh fields were full of black bellies right before sunset. They all had their heads stuck deep in the muck feeding when a hawk came flying overhead screaming. All of their heads shot up and searched the sky. They seemed very concerned.  After a few minutes they went back to eating. I shot this far away across  the field. They were all standing at attention.

Ring necked duck. I don't see these very often.

Blue winged teal with a little green showing.

Blue winged teal staring at me.

Lots of ducks at Circle B Bar Reserve right now. They are reporting record numbers of black bellied whistling ducks. The marsh fields were full of them on my late afternoon trip recently. There's such a huge variety of ducks there. The ponds are also full of coots. Soon most of these ducks will be migrating back home to the north. 

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Kapok Park in December

"Can someone please clean up my home?" says the night heron.

Warbler

Loggerhead shrike posed in the tree.

I couldn't find this duck in my Florida Audubon app. It was a surface feeding duck. I've never seen this one before.

My first kildeer shot. There were 3 of them but they are very skittish and I couldn't get them all together.

Muscovy ducks don't get much attention. This guy was watching me for a while when I was taking pictures of the kildeer so I turned around and snapped a few of him.

A quick pre-New Year's walk around Kapok Park provided a few new birds for me. This was the first time I had seen a kildeer that close and I had never seen a loggerhead shrike at Kapok before. Still trying to figure out what type of duck that was. It was all alone feeding near a group of limpkins and ibis. There seems to be a lot of trash in the lake. The only way to clean it up would be to get a boat in there. I'm sure with cutbacks there's no one maintaining these small parks. 

Drive home from work - Skywatch Friday

The Thursday before New Year's I left work a little early and decided to stop along the Courtney Campbell Causeway before heading home to see if there were any birds hanging around. I had not been in a while because now it's dark when I leave work. Clouds had rolled in and it was just starting to get dark. There weren't too many birds around. I saw 2 groups of ducks floating out in the bay. They looked like lesser scaup. They were disappearing ducks. One minute there would be 4 or 5 ducks floating around and then there would only be 1. Lesser scaup are diving ducks which dive for their food. They kept doing it all at the same time. They are very skittish and would not get too close to the causeway. As I was leaving the access road on the causeway, I saw the above osprey sitting on a lamp post. At first he was turned facing the main road but when I stopped he turned around and looked down at me. He almost looks comical.

For more skyscape photography from around the world, visit http://skyley.blogspot.com/.

Flying things at Epcot

There is lots of wildlife at Epcot if you just look for it. There are tiny sparrows everywhere (especially around the food areas).  The big lake that the countries sit around has lots of ducks. I saw mostly mallards there. The lake also had ibis and cormorants all around. We saw several people feeding the ducks. I found the ducklings in a small pond at the Canada exhibit. They were so cute and had a huge crowd watching them. That alone was worth the price of admission to a Disney Park, right?

Walk around an Atlanta Park.

A large hand fed group of mallards greeted us at the lake.

I can't believe this waterfall is right in the heart of Atlanta (on the Emory campus).

There were tiny warblers everywhere.

The leaves were just turning.

Canadian geese trying to sleep.

Walking back to our car we saw this hawk go flying by. I ran after him and saw him perched in the woods.

We met some of my hubby's family in a park on the Emory University campus. It's a fairly large park with a lake in the middle. The weather was perfect, sunny and 70 degrees. There were a lot of ducks there that get fed on a daily basis so they came swimming up when they saw us walk towards the lake. We saw a handful of canadian geese that must be stopping over on their way south. And the hawks, there were tons of hawks everywhere. When we were driving through the city we saw hawks sitting on the lamp posts on Interstate 75. Guess that's why they named the basketball team after them.