Happy Easter 2019

We’ve had a beautiful Easter weekend on Sanibel Island. A storm at the end of the week brought in some cooler weather for a couple of days. Yesterday, we took a walk on the Indigo Trail at Ding and had the chance to get several photos of nesting birds. We also saw this pretty Roseate Spoonbill as we crossed the boardwalk. I almost missed a river otter that came scooting by the spoonbill in the shallow water. I barely got one quick photo of him.

We watched these two Yellow-Crowned Night Herons working together to build their nest. I must have taken 150 photos of them. The nest was easy to see and they were fascinating.

One would leave for just a couple of minutes and come back with a twig and hand it over, then watch as the other one placed it just right. The process repeated several times. I really hope there is enough food now for the birds to produce viable eggs and healthy babies.

They seemed to be courting during the nest building process, fluffing up their pretty feathers for each other.

Searching for the perfect twig!

This young Yellow-Crowned Night Heron watched the nesting process, too.

I love that the male Anhinga is sitting on the nest as the female sits on a limb to the right.

I only had a glimpse of the Tri-Colored Heron below, so it’s not a great photo. But, I love the bright blue on the beak that is part of the mating plumage.

The only photo I was able to get on the drive through Ding is the River Otter below. I guess the birds were busy elsewhere!

On our walk through the Bailey Tract, we only saw a couple of Osprey, but they provided some nice photos.

Those talons and that beak look fierce.

This Osprey landed in the shallow water, then immediately took off and skimmed his talons along the water for a ways before lifting off. It was something I’d never seen them do before, almost like it was just having some fun.

We took a walk on the beach this morning. It was so nice and cool. The water was fairly churned up and the waves were pretty strong. It’s nice to see the uncrowded beaches, again.

These few shore birds were the only birds we saw when we were there.

Someone had left a couple of chairs on the beach, so the beach patrol left them a friendly warning. We are going into turtle season and there are some pretty strict rules for the beaches during turtle season. They’ve had a bad couple of years. Hoping for a great turtle season this year!

I guess if we have to leave the beach, at least we have a pretty path to walk to our car.

Then, back home to get photos of birds around our house.