Ding Low Tide

It has been almost a month since my last post. Between traveling and inclement weather, I haven’t been able to get any photos to share. I’ll start out with a couple of photos that I have taken around my home.

Did you know that the Northern Mockingbird is the state bird of Florida? I just found that out today, so I thought I’d pass it along. The one below sits on top of a bougainvillea plant in our yard quite often.

It’s unusual to have a brown pelican land in our neighborhood. The one below visited my neighbor’s backyard for quite a while one day.

There was a very low tide at around 10 am this morning at Ding. It exposed more of the land under the water at Ding than we had personally ever seen. If it were allowed, you could have walked across from Wildlife Drive to the tree line, but I think it would have been a very boggy trek!!

Large shrimp were on the brunch menu today!

And down the hatch!

The great blue heron below was a long distance away, but how can you pass up getting a pic of a GBH grabbing such a big fish?

Even the Osprey below got lucky with breakfast!

The starfish and horseshoe crab in the photos below were in shallow water under the observation deck along Wildlife Drive.

Now, for the not so good news. It appears that the eagles that I’ve been watching were not successful with their nesting this year. They tended the nest for at least a month, but then they were gone. One of them occasionally comes back and sits in the nest for a while, before flying away, again.

Below, I caught a photo of a hawk sitting in the tree above the eagle nest looking down on the eagle that appeared to still be nesting at the time. This was taken a few weeks ago.

A few days ago, I saw a juvenile eagle visiting the nest. It stayed for a while, pulling at the sticks in the nest and poking around the nest, in general. The photo isn’t very clear, but thought I’d share.

Today, an eagle was visiting the nest, but it didn’t stay long.

On another note, I hope that the city finds out who killed the tree with the nest in it and why. These Australian Pines are invasive and it is perfectly ok to kill and remove them. But, not so much, if it has an eagle’s nest in it.