Baby night herons at Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary

Profile of adult black crowned night heron. Those red eyes really stick out.

Night heron hanging on the roof of the sanctuary.

Baby night heron high up in the tree.

Adult night heron.

Baby screaming for mom.

Most people go to the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary to see the normal stuff; injured pelicans, egrets and a few raptors. But what surprises a lot of people when they get there is the baby birds high up in the trees. Colonies of night herons descend on the sanctuary during this time and build nests in the shade trees over the sanctuary. They have babies there and it can get really loud with all of those baby night herons screaming for food. I guess the wild night herons think it's a safe place to raise a family. The trees are full of them right now. It's interesting how different the babies look from the parents. They start out brown spotted and end up that pretty shade of cream and gray. Just be careful where you stand at the sanctuary. Those shade trees are full of birds and that poop has to go somewhere. Take it from someone who knows, bird poop is not good for the camera. I spent a few minutes in the bathroom cleaning my lens. I hope I got it all off.  

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. 

Birds on the causeway - Skywatch Friday

Another stop on the Courtney Campbell causeway during my drive home from work two weeks ago. I'm really going to miss these now that the time has changed and it's a dark trip home.  The above was a flock of skimmers that took off when a jogger went running by. At first I was mad at the jogger for disturbing the birds but it did make for a nicer picture.

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

Cute little plover watching me.

A small group of marbled godwits trying to sleep. I think I was keeping them up even though I wasn't too close.

Finally, the sun went down and the moon came out. I took this on the causeway with my 300mm lens handheld.

Dowitchers walking along the shore after sunset.

Sanderling running for cover after dark. I used my flash on this one.

You can usually find at least one night heron on the causeway. This was an immature.

Carillon boardwalk in north St. Petersburg.

Juvenile northern mockingbird. There were lots of mockingbirds there.

The usual alligator. He was swimming by the birds below.


Three juvenile night herons. The alligator was swimming close by. I think that's why they were standing at attention.

Lots of butterflies around.

Lots of turtles as well.

I found a new park close by work. It's actually not new, I just had not taken the time to stop there. I didn't think there would be much to see. It's a medium size lake with a boardwalk around most of it and surrounded on most sides by office buildings. There's a small section that has a trail and is covered by trees and mangroves. I left work later than usual one day recently and just decided to stop by and walk around. There was a handful of after work joggers running around. It had the usual water birds, alligators and turtles. I'll definitely stop there again since it's so close to work.

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.

Skywatch Friday - Clouds on the causeway

One day last week after work I was coming home late across the Courtney Campbell Causeway. The sun was just coming down. It was so bright but kept trying to hide behind the clouds. I had my camera with me so I stopped off on the access road and parked. There were lots of people out fishing along the causeway. It would have been a nice night out if it hadn't have been so hot. As the sun was getting lower it hit a wall of haze so it lost it's luster. The below juvenile night heron kept me company while I was taking pictures. He just stood there and watched, probably thinking "Why doesn't this fool go home and have dinner in her air conditioned house?".

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

More yellow crowned night herons at work.

I recently got a phone call from my friend, Pam, at work. She left a message - "There's another heron's nest in the back of the parking lot, 2 trees over from the bridge." I brought my camera the next day and driving into work, I stopped and snapped the above pictures. The first 2 pictures are of the babies and the last picture is one of the parents. The babies still have all of the brown coloring but they are getting big. They will soon be flying around looking for their own food. There's a lot of ponds on the property at work so there are some good eats to be found. Hopefully, they'll stick around.

Wild night herons at Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary

Baby night heron siblings sticking together high up in tree.

This baby was looking in the pelican aviary thinking "I want to go play with them!"


Upclose of a baby night heron, only a couple of months old.


One of the parents.

Adult night heron creeping around the travel cages that the sanctuary has been collecting.

The above birds are black crowned night herons. There's a large wild group of them breeding high up in the trees over the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary. Right now every branch is full of them. I guess they come for a free handout and they know it's pretty safe from natural predators. It's funny how different the babies look from the parents. You would think they are completely different birds. Those bright red eyes are so amazing.

Baby blue herons at work

Several months ago I was walking over to the cafeteria at work (we have 52 acres on the property) and I saw a handful of yellow crowned night herons hanging out in the pine trees up against one of the buildings. They were building nests! I kept thinking I need to bring my good camera to work to get some pictures but at the time you could just see the tops of the mom's heads on the nests. There were 12 nests in all over a few weeks. Now several months later I noticed some of the babies getting bigger and finally brought my camera in to get some pictures now that you can see the babies sitting outside of the nest. The sad part of the story is out of the 12 nests only 3 were productive. Blackbirds have been attacking the nests and fighting with the night herons over the eggs. Coworkers have told me stories of being close by and hearing load screaming going on between the two species. There are lots of broken eggs on the ground. As of this date we have one nest with 3 big babies, one nest with 2 babies and one nest with a mom still sitting on hopefully eggs.

It's funny how different the babies look from their parents. The morning I took the above pictures there were no parents around the nests. I'm sure they were close by getting food. The babies start out brown and spotted and later turn grey with dark grey and yellow on the head. On the way from work on the same day, the below night heron was sitting on a utility line on my street so you can see what the adult looks like.

More wild birds at the zoo.

Snowy egret missing a foot.

Snowy egret with missing foot flying over the cheetah pond.


Great egret guarding the 2 hippos.

Night heron hanging around the alligator pond.


Great egrets beginning to nest high up in the trees above the alligator pond.

Saturday morning was cold for Tampa (41 degrees). I was going to stay curled up on the couch but then the sun came out right before noon so I headed out to the zoo. Lots of wild birds activity at the zoo. I saw the one footed snowy egret again hanging around the cheetah pond. I saw him several months ago at the meerkat exhibit. He must call the zoo home. As I made my way over to the alligator pond I noticed all of the trees where starting to fill up with great egret nests. There must have been 12 nests already going. There were also a lot of night herons hanging around. They will start nesting a little later. Last spring the zoo had a great little bird rookery going on around the alligator and otter pond. I'll have to go back in another month to see if there are baby birds being born.