Nature Is Not Always Pleasant

Our trip through Ding this morning, to check on the nests, left me feeling a bit unsettled. The nest with the four Yellow-Crowned Night Heron chicks still had four chicks, but one of them didn’t look as if it would make it much longer. For whatever reason, one is much smaller than the other three. Maybe it hatched a couple of days after the others, so they had already started to thrive and were stronger? We watched as the three larger chicks pecked and pulled at the little one. They had pulled out most of its feathers and were trying to push it out of the nest. It was sad to watch nature’s survival of the fittest playing out in front of us. These four photos are the least upsetting of the ones I took.

On a happier note, the Anhinga below is one of the two chicks I have been posting about since they hatched around the first of May. I wasn’t sure she was one of them at first. But, she was acting very clumsy and uncoordinated as she sort of hopped from one branch to another. She also watched every sound and movement with watchful eyes.

When she hopped to another branch and turned around, her feet were the give-away for me.

Below is what an adult Anhinga’s feet look like . . . very different.

Anhinga_Feet.jpg

The Tri-colored Heron is still sitting on eggs in the nest. Hopefully, there will be chicks next time we go by.

We saw the young Green Heron below. It looks very much like the one we saw last week and in almost the same spot.

The two birds below were at quite a distance, but it’s not every day that you can get a photo of a Swallow-Tailed Kite with a wingspan of around 4 feet and a Frigatebird with a wingspan of 7 to 8 feet in the same picture.

The Common Gallinule below wandered by the boardwalk.

The nest below is pretty far downstream from the boardwalk and I could barely see it through the tree limbs. The 3 chicks look a little older than the four in the other nest.

The only other photo I took at Ding is a group of Roseate Spoonbills and a Reddish Egret along Wildlife Drive.

We stopped by the Bailey Tract to see if there were any Black-Necked Stilts. We lucked up and saw two that didn’t seem to mind getting their photos taken.

It’s that time of year when we start seeing a lot of these huge lubber grasshoppers.

Dragonflies always fascinate me. They come in so many different colors. It’s quite hard to catch them being still enough to photograph. This one hovered over me and let me get several photos of it. The first pic looks as if it only has 3 wings. The second photo taken a split second later shows the 4th wing.

We have seen a beautiful Swallow-Tailed Kite flying low overhead at our home for a few days. I finally got a couple of photos of it yesterday. I love to watch them sailing overhead.

Today’s blog started out sad, so I’ll end it on a pleasant note with photos of pretty butterflies in our yard.

First Day of June

It was another very hot morning for our trip to check on the nests at Ding. The 3 Green Heron chicks appeared to have left the nest, or at least it was empty this morning. They mature and leave the nest fairly fast. They fly at 21 to 23 days and fledge the nest at around 30 days.

We saw the four Yellow-Crowned Night Heron chicks and they are still rocking their punk look. They mature a little slower, it seems.

I don’t know if it is an optical illusion, but one of the chicks seems a lot bigger than the others.

There are so many captions that would work for the photo below! I don’t even know where to start!

We were told that the Tri-Colored Heron nest below has 3 eggs in it. My husband was able to see two eggs when the parent stood up briefly and turned around. I couldn’t see into the nest from my vantage point. We hope to see some chicks next time we are there!

The Osprey chick (orange eyes on the right) was still in the nest today.

On our walk down Indigo Trail back to our car, we saw a big spider overhead that resembled a brown recluse, a Pileated Woodpecker that looked a lot like Woody Woodpecker, and a Fiddler Crab.

I love the little red wave on his head that is so much like Woody Woodpecker.

We were treated to a flock of Roseate Spoonbills along Wildlife Drive at Ding, again.

As we got out of the Jeep, one of the Spoonbills took flight right over our heads. I managed to catch one photo of it.

Between the pesky no-see-ums and standing beside this group of photographers with their huge lens, we didn’t stay very long in this spot! Talk about lens envy!

Then, off to the Bailey Tract to see if we might see any Black-Necked Stilts. When we walked up to the first pond area at the tract, there were two of the Stilts at the edge. I only had time to grab a couple of pics before they flew away and before I even had time to set up my tripod.

You can certainly see where they get the “stilt” part of their name!

There was one Roseate Spoonbill near the edge of the water.

The Snowy Egret below decided that it was offended by the Little Blue Heron, so they had a bit of a kerfuffle. Most of it happened where tall weeds were between my camera and the birds, so I missed the best shots.

Memorial Day Beach Walk

We didn’t find any shells at the beach this morning, but the no-see-ums surely found us! We had a quick walk, took a couple of pics and then headed back home.

Turtle nesting season is well underway. These are tracks from a Loggerhead turtle. You can see where her chest was dragging down the middle and her flippers digging through the sand on either side. Loggerheads can grow up to 3 ft. long and weigh 200 to 350 pounds. It is amazing when you are standing in front of the tracks and it really hits home just how big they are.

Volunteers have a designated area of beach that they walk every day to look for new nests. If they find one, they mark it for the turtle patrol to come by and make it official and set up the perimeter. The metal grid on top of the nest keeps the coyotes and other prey from digging up the eggs. Each nest can contain 100 or more eggs.

Catch of the day!!

Wishing everyone a very safe and happy Memorial Day!

Thinking of all those who have given their life to serve this great country.

Memorial Day weekend nest update

We got an early start on our trip to see the nests this morning, so that we could get ahead of the heat. I’m so amazed at how much the Anhinga chicks have grown in just 3 weeks. If you look back at my blog from May 4th, titled “Anhinga Chick”, you’ll see that one had probably just hatched. Here they are just 3 weeks later, looking almost ready to fly! It should be another 2 to 3 weeks before they fledge the nest, though.

It was fun to watch them interact.

All 4 of the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron chicks had hatched. If you look really close, the 4th chick can almost been seen behind/near the right eye of the chick to the far right. I LOVE their Einstein hair!

The one on the right looks as if it is yelling at its sibling. I wonder what it is saying? Maybe - “Get off my foot!!” or “I call dibs on going first at the next meal. I’m starving!”

At first, the 3 Green Heron chicks were all in a pile asleep. So, I walked over to take the Anhinga photos. When I came back, the nest was empty. The chicks were flitting around the branches going completely out of site. I was so surprised that they were already that agile. One came back to the nest, so I only got the one pic below. I read that they start to fly at 21 to 23 days old, so it won’t be long.

We didn’t see the parents of the Green Heron chicks. We did get a very close look at a couple of juvenile Green Heron chicks, though. They still had some of the little wild hairs on their head. They were probably siblings from a nearby nest. They sat together in a tree beside the boardwalk while several people walked by and took photos of them.

Today, I learned that the Green Heron is one of the few tool-using birds. It commonly drops bait onto the surface of the water and grabs the small fish that are attracted. It uses a variety of baits and lures, including insects, earthworms, twigs, or feathers.

I love this look, especially with the little wild hairs.

The juvenile Green Heron below flew onto a branch down near the water. I’m not sure if it is one of the two Green Herons above, but I think it is. The colors look completely different in the shade, if it is the same one.

The Ospreys in the nest at the end of the boardwalk were squawking like crazy. I looked up and the Osprey below was flying nearby.

The Osprey baby (orange eyes on the left) looks like it is close to being big enough to fledge the nest.