Spoonbills galore and more!

Even more Roseate Spoonbills at Ding today, along with Yellow-Crowned Night Herons, a Great Blue Heron, and a snake.  There were at least 22 Spoonbills in this spot for a while.

Look at the orange tail feathers on this one below!  I'd never noticed that before.

I love to see a Great Blue Heron with its mating plumage.

Notice the rabbit in the background to the right of the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.

I think this is a Florida Water Snake. We saw it crossing the road at Ding when several people stopped to take a photo of it.

We took a quick walk on the beach.  There were no birds in sight until we were ready to leave and then we were treated to a couple overhead.

This Magnificent Frigatebird was very high up, so the photo is not great.  But, I love watching them.  I think this is a juvenile since it has white on the chest and under the wings.  An adult has a wing span of over 7 feet!!  They can soar around for weeks without landing anywhere.  It makes me tired just to think about it!

This little lizard on our back deck gave me a friendly warning!

A colorful sunrise from my back deck.  I wish I'd been at the beach where I'm sure it was even more beautiful.

Pink on a hot day!

A quick drive through Ding this morning yielded lots of views of pink feathers . . . some of my very favorite.  Did you know that the Roseate Spoonbill was virtually eliminated from the United States during the late 1800's, mostly due to plume hunters.  The hunters wanted their beautiful pink feathers for fans and hats.

As a Roseate Spoonbill matures, they become more pink.  Their head also gets more bald!  Hmmmm . . . 

These were the most that grouped together while I was there.  Someone said there were a couple dozen Spoonbills here a short while earlier.  These were finishing up with their grooming and flew away one at a time.  It gave all of us a chance to grab some photos of them flying.

I took a short video of the Spoonbills grooming.

This Great Egret was fishing and then bringing his meal to the sand bar.

This Fiddler Crab has a really crabby face!!

On a trip to Lighthouse beach a few days ago, I was able to grab a couple of photos.  You can see the Osprey perched on the opposite side of the lighthouse.

The Osprey stayed until we walked around to the opposite side of the lighthouse.

These two Brown Pelicans were sitting on top of the cover over fisherman's pier.

It was fun to watch this Brown Pelican catching fish under the pier.

See!  I ate the whole thing!!

This big guy was booking along and grazing through the beach grass.

Birds Galore!

A drive through Ding and some photos at home produced several different birds and some rabbits to photograph!

Pink is one of my favorite colors on a bird!  I took far too many photos of the Roseate Spoonbills.  But, it leaves more to share for another day!

And then, one of my other favorite birds, the Great Blue Heron!

The brown on this Brown Pelican's neck looks like velvet!

This pretty Tri-Colored Heron waited so patiently for me to take his photograph.

This Reddish Egret looks a little mad.  But, I think he was just enjoying the sun since we haven't seen much of it lately!

We took a quick trip by the beach to see the condition of the erosion.  We were pleased to see that a good deal of sand had been deposited back on the beach.  

It is so good to see our beautiful blue/green clear water.  

Back to our yard and our neighborhood.  The Anhinga chick in the nest behind our house is growing so fast!

It seems a bit young to be wingersizing, but it was doing it with gusto!

I think this is the daddy Osprey from the nest behind our neighbors house.  Sadly, one of the two chicks did not thrive and did not make it.  The other one has grown and appears to have fledged.  I've seen the dad sitting in this tree several times, overlooking the empty nest.

Here he is again, a couple of days ago on an overcast day.

This Yellow Crowned Night Heron posed for me while drying out his wings.

When you have an itch, you just have to stop and scratch!

On our walk around the neighborhood, we saw this pretty Little Blue Heron and several rabbits!

Rainy day Heron

Memorial Day weekend looks like it will be a soggy one in SW Florida.  We really needed the rain, though.  It makes it hard to get photos, but I managed to get a few around my home.  This pretty Yellow-Crowned Night Heron found an abundance of worms in our yard.

When you are a bird, you can shake off the rain and still look really cool!

This Osprey landed in a dead tree across the street with his lunch.  He was too far away, with too much rain, to get a good photo.

A couple of days ago, before the rain started, I got an early morning photo of this beautiful Osprey posing on one foot in a tree across the street.