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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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).

Yes, it's baby swan season.

A recent trip to Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park produced another beautiful swan family. There were 3 siblings in all. They were so graceful following mom up and down the skinny river that runs through the park. Right before I left, I checked on them and they had plopped down for an afternoon nap. I'm now on a quest to get some pictures of baby swans when they are a little older to watch them grow up.

Baby swan at Lakeland

I stopped by Lake Morton in Lakeland last weekend to see if there were any babies yet. I was there about a month ago and saw lots of eggs. I only saw one baby swan. There are fenced areas where the swans can go in from the lake to stay and keep away from people walking by. There was one swan pair with a baby staying behind the fence. The last picture is of another swan who seemed to have built her nest outside the fence. It looked as if she was counting her eggs. Hopefully she will have success with all of her eggs.