Soft and Fuzzy

Baby mallards hiding in the grass.

More baby mallards floating by.

Baby swan (baby swans are called a cygnet).

Mom, is that my sibling?  Baby swan looking at an egg.

Baby goose trying to hide.

Baby swan preening.

Looking like a tissue paper commercial.

A walk around Lake Morton can produce some Ohhs and Ahhs. After spending all morning walking around the lake, I had to drag myself away to head back home to Tampa. So many babies, so little time. I wanted to stay and play with them all. People come to the lake to feed them. Once swans have babies, the babies and the parents are put in large pens along the lake until the babies grow bigger and then are let go. I think the swans were diminishing in numbers and the city of Lakeland were trying to get the numbers back up so they take extra care of the babies. There are signs that say "Don't feed the swans in pens." They get feed a special diet until they are released back into the wild. So all of the swan baby pictures are taken through the fence of the pens.

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Lake Morton - City wildlife

The baby goose that is being raised by the black swan mom is growing up.

Baby goose standing in the middle of her adoptive parents.

She's looking at me like "Where's the bread?"

I found this great blue heron fluffing up from the wind.

Cute turtle staring at me from a rock.

I stopped by Lake Morton in downtown Lakeland on my way home from a recent trip to Gatorland to see how much the baby goose had grown up. Somehow, a  pair of black swans took over parenting a baby goose at the lake. The swans were still staying close to the baby even though now it was almost as big as the swans. They followed each other around the lake. They were a strange family.  It looked like most of the white pelicans and migrating ducks were gone from the lake. Only the resident geese, swans and ibis were present. I still didn't see any baby swans but several swans were sitting on nests.

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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.

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A strange family - Mama swan and baby goose

I'm not quite sure of the story behind this family.  At Lake Morton there's an adult black swan who is taking care of a baby goose. The swan follows the baby around and stays really close. She treats it as if it were her own baby. I don't know if the geese parents abandoned the baby or somehow eggs got mixed up. There's a lot of both swans and geese at the lake. I had seen a picture of the baby on a fellow flickr's stream  Mike's picture and thought I'd stop by the lake and see if I could find it. Sure enough, wandering around the crowd of people feeding the wildlife was the baby goose and mom swan. They made a cute family.

Lakeland's Beautiful Mascot - the mute swan.

I had to post some pictures of the beautiful mute swans that swim around Lake Morton in Lakeland.  You have to wonder where all of these swans came from since this is central Florida. I looked it up and you can read about it here History of swans in Lakeland.  They say there are over 200 swans there now since 1954. There are nesting pens set up around the lake so that only the swans can get in from the water. A few swans were sitting on nests when I was there a couple of weeks ago. I'd like to go back in another month or so to look for baby swans. If you stop by there, just watch where you step. There's a lot of swan poop in the grass along the way (and duck, geese, etc poop as well).

Ducks and gulls at Lake Morton

Ring necked duck

I'm not sure what this is. I couldn't find it in any of my bird books. Maybe some type of mallard?

Ring billed gulls catching some bread. That duck better duck!

I think the ibis said "Hey lady, did you bring any peanut butter to go with this bread?".

A group of male and female ring necked ducks. They were chasing after the bread that people were throwing.

Nice ball on the head.

It all starts with a person strolling into the park with a bag of bread. Chaos happens. Ducks that are normally shy of humans come swimming up. Geese start attacking your ankles.(That happened to me the first time I came to this lake. I was taking pictures and a goose started banging on my ankle. Startled me.) Gulls start diving everyone close by. Ibis by the tons come flying in. Should it be illegal to feed the wildlife? It probably is. I know it's cute and fun for the little kids but do the ducks need to fill up on bread all day. On a Saturday afternoon there are tons of people there feeding them with bread. The geese are the most obnoxious ones. After the one banged his beak on my ankle I stay clear of the crowd and take pictures with my longer lens.

Are they really wildlife if they are being fed on a daily basis?

White pelicans at Lake Morton

Beautiful white pelicans at Lake Morton

The swan just had to get in the picture.

Floating around.

All lined up.

You'd think he'd fall off.

Lakeland is a small town in the middle of Florida. It's halfway between Tampa and Orlando. Their city mascot is the mute swan. There's a small lake in the middle of the city that has a large swan population. People have picnics and walk around the lake and generally hang out with the swans. The swans get fed a lot. Now there's a huge population of white ibis, geese and ducks that are there for a handout. You might also come across a few white pelicans as well. I don't know if these white pelicans migrate back up north for the summer like all of the other white pelicans in the state do. I was here early last summer and there were still a few white pelicans hanging around. White pelicans eat different than brown pelicans do. Brown pelicans dive into the water for their fish. White pelicans swim around the surface and scoop up their fish. Often you see brown pelicans alone but white pelicans are usually in groups. These white pelicans looked pretty. They don't seem to have a rough life here at the lake. 

More on the other fowl at Lake Morton later.