Kapok Park after work.

Limpkin with a snack.

Follow the leader. Baby mallards following mom.

Red bellied woodpecker. You can barely see the red on it's belly.

It's checking to make sure it's a red bellied woodpecker as well.

Baby blue heron. This was taken in bad light but I thought it was interesting to see how the blue is starting to come out.

Tri-colored heron standing guard.

I stopped by Kapok Park in Clearwater on the way home from work last week. There wasn't anything unusual there. It was a nice walk anyway. It's a challenge to photograph there after work because the sun is going to down on the opposite side of all the best stuff. There's a lot of shade as well. The best time for the light is in the morning but I can't make it there before work so I go after work. I was really disappointed there were no great horned owls there. For the last 2 spring seasons a couple have raised a baby there. No owls this year. I'm going to try and get to the park quite a bit this summer. It beats sitting in traffic.

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My first King Rail and other birds too.

My first king rail. This one has been in the same spot for a couple of weeks at the park, just look for the big group of photographers hanging around the corner of Heron Hideout and Marsh Rabbit Run.

Red bellied woodpecker looking at something interesting.

Blue-gray gnatcatcher looking up at the sky. Probably checking out a hawk.

One of the sandhill crane couples had laid an egg in a small nest in the middle of the marsh.  Hopefully, in the next week or two there will be a fuzzy brown baby running around.

Great egret flying along Lake Hancock.

This is why helium balloons should be outlawed. Some poor animal is going to choke on that. I would have grabbed it but I wasn't in the mood to step over the alligators.

One of the smaller ones at the park.

Another gorgeous weekend and another trip to Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland. These were taken a couple of weekends ago during one of the first nice warm weekends we had. People were disappointed that the white pelicans had left but there are still so many things to see there. I never did see the sora rail or virginia rail. Or the orange crowned warbler. The list goes on. You will always see lots of alligators there. I'm going back soon to check on the status of the sandhill crane egg.

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Birds at Chesnut Park (& a woodpecker video too)

Male anhinga sitting in his usual spot on the lake.

Tufted titmouse looking down at me. I see a lot of these at Chesnut Park.

My first black and white warbler.

The woods seem to be full of pileated woodpeckers.

I was standing on the boardwalk taking pictures of the above pileated woodpecker when I had a thought "I should take a video of him banging away." The nice thing about my new camera (Nikon D7000) is that it's really easy to flip the switch and record. I hadn't really spent any time doing that yet. After I took the video and got home I realized I was holding the camera portrait to get a long shot of the woodpecker and in the video the woodpecker is not set up right. I can't figure out a way to rotate a video. I'm assuming there's not one unless I had some high tech video editing program. Hopefully, next time I'll get it right. If you have the sound, on the howling you hear at the very beginning is another woodpecker calling to the one in the video. They get really loud in the woods.

Brooker Creek Reserve - 1st visit

Some type of woodpecker. It didn't have any red on it. 

Same woodpecker as first picture.

Looking down at a row of utility poles. They seem to be a condo for vultures.

Juvenile bald eagle. It's the first time I've seen a juvenile. This picture is highly cropped from my 500mm lens. It was sitting high up on a utility pole and looked like a dark blob.

There were tons of black vultures soaring overhead.

There's a reserve in north Pinellas county called Brooker Creek Reserve. I had heard about it but I had never been there. Several weekends ago I stopped by there before going to Chesnut Park. There's up to 5 miles of trails that you can hike there. They were very well marked. I walked about 2 1/2 miles of it. I did not see very much on the trail. Mostly woodpeckers. It was very quiet. One section of the trail has a bird blind that sits just off a power line trail with a small pond in front of it. The best part was all of the vultures sitting on the utility poles. I noticed a blob sitting off by itself at the top of one pole. When I zoomed in I realized it was a juvenile bald eagle. That was the highlight of my trip.  I've heard the park has turkeys as well as all types of critter roaming including bobcats. I saw non of this. Maybe on my next trip.

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Windy day at Honeymoon Island

Is this a caspian tern or common tern?  They both look alike. Anyway, it's fairly rare to see one here. Too many laughing gulls around.

Black vulture posing on snag.

This looks like a pine warbler. It was the closest thing in my Audubon guide.

Woodpecker hanging upside down.

 

I think this is a juvenile ring-billed gull (adult below). There were a handful of ring billed gulls hanging around on the beach. This one was eating the insides of the conch.

Adult ring billed gull. I like the way their feet matches their beak.

Kiteboarder at Honeymoon Island.  Looking down to Clearwater beach.

Two weekends ago it was very windy. I decided to hit the nature trail at Honeymoon Island to see what was going on with the eagles there. I had heard they had 2 baby chicks but they were still too small to show their heads. It didn't feel windy on the inside wooded trail but I decided to head north along the mangrove trail to the north end beach. The wind was blasting. There were only a few gulls hanging around, no other shorebirds.  There wasn't a large variety of birds on the trail. I think the weather had blown them away. There are tons of osprey, more on those later. I decided to hit the beach before I headed home but when I got there it was just too windy (and I was hungry) so I didn't stay long. The rocky beach section was full of live conchs. The gulls were feeding off of them and a few shell seekers were looking around.  A few kiteboarders were out and they were moving fast across the water.

When I got home my husband said "Weren't you cold?" I said "No, wimp."

An hour in a cemetery before sundown.

Red bellied woodpecker on the side of a utility pole.

There's a flock of wild parrots that live around the cemetery.

They were looking down at my like "lady what are you doing?"

There also seems to be a pair of raccoons that live in the cemetery.

I couldn't tell what he was chewing on. He wouldn't let me get close.

American kestrel on top of large snag.

The sun was about to go down and the kestral was trying to sleep. (Moon in the background)

I finally saw the eagle sticking it's head out of the nest.

I was able to leave work a little early on the Friday before MLK day and decided to head to the cemetery in St. Petersburg where the eagle's nest was. I had a little more than an hour before the sun was going down and I had to head back to Tampa for dinner. I got there and no eagles were present. I thought "maybe he'll be back with a fish soon." No luck the entire hour. I didn't even see anything on the nest until I was leaving and looked back out of the window of the car and saw a head pop up. I stopped and took the last picture. I've since heard the babies should be hatching some time this week so I'm going to have to make another stop soon. My hour wasn't wasted. It's amazing the amount of wildlife in a cemetery. I guess they don't get a lot of traffic through there on a regular basis although while I was there several cars stopped by to check on the eagles.

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Birds and other things at Circle B Bar Reserve

My first bittern. Yea, I scratched this one off my list. But really, these pictures aren't too great. It was too close to the trail and didn't move for a half hour.

The bittern finally started creeping around under the brush.

This woodpecker was screaming to have his picture taken.

Lazy limpkins hanging around the booms in the lake.

Some type of water snake that had just crawled out of the lake.

There was a raccoon family high up in a tree. My thanks to Philip (one of the semi-regulars to the park) for spotting these guys. He sees everything.

These blue winged teals were too cute. They would bob under the water at the same time.

My New Year's Eve trip to Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland was pretty productive. I finally saw my first bittern. It almost looks like a green heron but without the pretty colors that the green heron has. They blend in well with the dead reeds in the marsh. I might have just walked right by him if a group hadn't already been standing there watching him. It's amazing the amount of limpkins there. They were everywhere.

I am disappointed about Bubba though. One of the park's largest alligators, who lived in the main pond at the big intersection of trails, was relocated. I'm not sure if it was out of the park or a different section of the park. She was very visible in her spot and would lay right on the edge of the trail. The section was roped off and there were big warning signs not to bother the alligators but apparently some kids were seen throwing rocks at her so the park moved her. She was a little too close but I liked to see her laying there on my visits.

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Atlanta birds in the cold - My World Tuesday

Woodpecker and friend sharing the feeder.

American robins were everywhere.

Not sure what the birds are with the stripe on their wings. I don't think they are red winged blackbirds. I didn't see any red. There were some grackles mixed in.

Sparrow was waiting to get to the feeder.

Female cardinal at the feeder.

People say there are robins in Florida in the winter but I have never seen one here. I've only seen them in Atlanta. I forget about them until I visit the in-laws. On my Christmas eve walk around my in-law's neighborhood I found a handful of birds in the cold. One house had a bird feeder that had quite a few visitors. I was glad I had brought my 300mm lens with me. I almost didn't thinking it would be too cold to be outside (for me and the birds) but both myself and birds were out a good bit.

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Also,check out more birds at World Bird Wednesday below.