Limpkins eating at Kapok Park

I seem to be lucking out on the limpkin mealtimes. I feel like I've seen more limpkins in the last month than I have in the last 2 years. There were a handful at Lettuce Lake right before Christmas. There were at least 6 at Kapok Park and on a recent trip to Circle B they were everywhere. Was this past spring a banner year for limpkin babies? I have never seen one. Limpkins eat apple snails and freshwater mussels. They will also eat insects, worms and frogs if their main diet is scarce. There was a group of white ibis hanging around the limpkins. I think they were hoping the limpkins would drop something but they never did. I'm going to be on the lookout  for limpkin babies this spring

Sawgrass Lake Park

Blue heron looking for some food.


Friends hanging out together.

The spoonbill had a lot of company.

I only saw one alligator on this trip.

Sawgrass Lake Park in St. Petersburg is known for alligators. I usually see several. I stopped by one night last week after work and found the main boardwalk closed. Not sure why or for how long. I ended up taking the boardwalk that goes away from the lake and down a trail. I did find a spoonbill with a few ibis friends and a great egret at the end of that trail. The weird thing about this park is that it's sitting right next to a major interstate (275) running through St. Pete. When you get inside you don't realize it unless you walk away from the lake and you start to hear the traffic. As I was about to leave the below flew overhead.

Neighborhood visitors over Labor Day weekend.

This immature blue heron was walking around next to our dock at low tide. He should turn all blue by his next molt.

Saturday I walked out into our screened in porch to water some plants and looked up and saw the above juvenile ibis staring at me from our fence. I went back inside and took this from the dining room window.

Sunday afternoon it was drizzling. I looked out the window and saw a few ducks heading down the channel for our dock. This is the first time I've seen a white duck in our channel. I looked it up and it's a type of mallard, so it's the same as the brown ducks that are with it. I ran out to the dock and snapped a few pictures in the rain.

When I went outside in the rain to take pictures of the white duck I saw the above night heron sitting on our dock. I took this picture from the door of the screened in porch. He must be young because his yellow crown was not quite yellow yet.

This girl is a temporary resident who is living in our screened in porch. I think the balls on the left have baby spiders inside. I need to sweep this spider outside or I might be having tons of spiders living in my porch soon.

Another resident, this was taken on my window sill. We have several frogs living in our shutters. I hadn't seen any in a while but Friday night he was sitting there when we got home from dinner so I ran in and got my camera.

Kapok Park - turtles and birds.

Turtle basking in the sun.



Small turtle swimming in the lake.


White ibis up close.

Mockingbird hiding in a tree.

Limpkin up close.

Limpkin posing on one of the park signs.

There are lots of animals at Kapok Park right now. I went there before the weekend to see how the baby owl was doing. There was no sign of it. I didn't think it was old enough to start flying yet. I spent an hour looking for him and the parents. They were all a no-show. Maybe they all went out for dinner that night. I'm going to check back in before this weekend to see if they came back. Hopefully they haven't left yet for the summer.

Lots of critters in the neighborhood

I was cleaning up the yard Saturday afternoon and found this bee sitting on an orange. It looks like he's missing a wing.



This kingfisher was flying around the channel and he landed on my neighbor's dock. There was already an ibis sitting there. They sat there together for a while eyeing each other. Taken from my bedroom window.


I think this shorebird is lost. He was standing on my neighbor's dock. I think he's a lesser
yellowlegs. We usually don't see shorebirds in the channels. Update from Andrea - it's a spotted sandpiper in non-breeding colors.


The question is how did a dead fish get on my dock? There's been a ton of dead fish floating in the channel from the freeze. I'm assuming a bird, maybe the osprey that hangs out in the channel, picked it up and then just happened to drop it there. Did he leave it there as a present?

Saturday night right before dark the osprey landed on my neighbor's sailboat mast. He usually sleeps there at night.

Wild birds at the zoo

Ibis flying into the fish pond.

Ibis flying into the fish pond.


Snowy egret eating lunch.

Stork has a big fish.

Sparrow taking a bath in the sand.

Saturday it looked like it was going to rain so I headed to the zoo. You can always find wild birds at the zoo looking for an easy bite. The fish pond at the cheetah exhibit had a large group of birds eating the fish. There were storks, egrets, ibis and a great blue heron. The cheetahs didn't seem to mind. They slept through lunch. I got lucky with the weather, the rain did not come until later in the day.

Global Cooling at Lakes Park

Free time to experience SW Florida's wildlife has been extremely limited these past weeks.

The Great Egret with Snowy Egret above was photographed at Lakes Park in January 2010.

On the first occasion for observation and photography this year where there wasn't an overcast sky, the temperature was near freezing at dawn. For that reason I made the very easy decision to simply stay warm indoors.

Earlier this week, I had heard two reports that there were significant fish deaths in lakes and ponds across the state of Florida. One of the reports specifically mentioned Lakes Park which I was compelled to visit to see the bird activity the fish might have attracted.

The Snowy Egret above was photographed at Lakes Park in January 2010.

Although I was not able to arrive at Lakes Park until near sundown on Tuesday, I still brought the camera with hopes to document something interesting. The bird activity was more prevalent than in any of my handful of other visits to the park in the past couple of years.

It was my greatest hope to see the Scarlet Ibis which has been observed at the park on occasion. Images available of it can certainly never do it justice for its beauty.

The Snowy Egret with Tricolored Heron above was photographed at Lakes Park in January 2010.

Although I saw many hundreds of birds in very close proximity including ibis, heron, egret, stork, the Scarlet Ibis was again elusive.

The timing of my visit to Lakes Park was a mere day and a half after I had heard of the fish kill, but the evidence of the event was non existent as might be explained by the great abundance of birds at the park. The cleanup effort was complete.

The Wood Stork above was photographed at Lakes Park in January 2010.

I took photographs of the birds I did see, primarily attempting to capture them in flight, and unfortunately had little success as the lighting was quite poor and I was shooting at a relatively high ISO setting to keep the shutter speed up.

It was a tremendous amount of fun in the experience nonetheless.

Another report heard this past week was that the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico had reached the high of that in the Atlantic Ocean. Does that mean a disappearance of the Gulf Stream if not just temporarily?

Backyard birds

I came home from work Friday just before dark and this little kingfisher was sitting on my backyard fence. I took these pictures through the bedroom window.

Then it started to rain. He still sat there for a while. He left before dark.

Then Saturday morning I peeked out the bedroom window and this immature ibis was eating bugs in our backyard.

Circle B Bar Part 2 - Bird variety

Spoonbills, ibis and storks taking a morning nap.


Glossy ibis


Sandhill crane from far away.


Eagle soaring overhead. He was really high up.

Red tailed hawk hiding in the moss.

Great blue heron having breakfast.

More Sunday morning pictures from the Circle B Bar flickr meet-up above. It amazes me how many different types of birds you can see there just walking around. I'm sure there are others I didn't see. There is so much activity in the morning. The bird marsh had it's usual spoonbills, storks and ibis hanging around in it. There were osprey, hawks and eagles constantly flying overhead.

Here's a list of birds that I saw there: spoonbills, whistling ducks, storks, great egrets, great blue heron, warbler, white pelicans, blue winged teal ducks, hawk, eagles, sandhill cranes, grackle, red winged blackbirds, moorhens, cormorants, vultures, caspian terns, ring billed gulls, sparrows, glossy ibis, white ibis, osprey, kingfisher, woodpeckers and grebes.

Circle B Bar Part 1 - Fog

Spiderwebs in the fog.

Fog at Circle B Bar Reserve. You could still see all of the amazing yellow flowers everywhere.

Black bellied whistling ducks stomping around in the mud during the fog. This was one parent (orange beak) with 2 immature ones. They don't get their orange beak until later.

Great egret scratching in the fog.

Hiding in the fog - spoonbill, stork and black bellied whistling duck.

Spoonbill flying overhead in the fog.

This Sunday morning I went to a flickr meet-up at Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland. There were about 22 other photographers there. When I got there it was very foggy. At first I was bummed that it was so foggy but when I started walking out to the trail I noticed how everything was covered with spiderwebs. You could really see them because the moisture from the fog was on them. It almost looked like there was snow everywhere (except for the 80 degrees). I met up with everyone out at the bird pond. Most of the birds were sleeping (which is what we should have been doing). It was a challenge for me to get any shots of anything. I was able to get some of the above which shows wildlife a little differently.

There were so many different types of birds there. It's such an amazing place. The fog eventually lifted and I took so many pictures that morning. I'm breaking up this visit into several parts. Keep an eye out for Part 2.