Tag: baby blue herons

Up close with a manatee

On By dinajohnstonIn bird photography, zoo animals9 Comments

You can pay a lot of money and go swimming where the manatees hang out and maybe see them swim by (I have never done it) or you can go to Zoo Tampa and see them really up close without getting wet. Although, I have had one swim within a few feet of me when I was out past the sandbar at Fort Desoto Park. It was feeding time when I visited the zoo in late April. This lady was eating right in front of the window.

The zoo has an amazing manatee hospital. All of these manatees came in as injured or sick ones and the zoo rehabilitates them and releases them once they are better. I saw a release that the zoo did in 2022 and you can read about it here. You can read more about their manatee center here.

It was funny to watch the turtle pick the algae off the manatee.

I got to see the baby pygmy hippo that was not quite a month old.

Now that’s a big lizard!

The red tailed guenons are my favorite primates. They are so animated.

Flamingos on alert.

I walked through the lorikeet aviary and caught these 2 flirting.

A wild baby grackle was looking for bugs but found a leaf.

The wild little blue herons nest in the trees over the alligator exhibit. There were a lot of nests far in the back but only one near the fence. The babies were almost fully grown but not ready to fly yet.

I saw a tricolored heron sitting in the cypress tree across the exhibit.

One tree over I could hear the babies making a loud clacking noise. They were waiting for Mom to regurgitate her food and come over and feed them. They have the craziest looks when they are begging.

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Fun at the zoo in June.

On By dinajohnstonIn bird photography2 Comments

The last remaining blue heron babies at the zoo in Tampa. Across the alligator exhibit I spotted a young tricolored heron looking grumpy. He still had that fuzz on the top of his head.

Some of the resident critters at the zoo.

One of my favorite birds in the aviary had babies this spring. The bottom 2 are offspring of the top one.

A wild mockingbird eating the berries.

 

A few fun things from Zoo Tamp in June.

Growing up at the zoo

On By dinajohnstonIn bird photography4 Comments

I went back to the zoo in late June to see how the wild baby blue herons were doing. While most of them were almost all grown up, there were a few that had just been born.  All of these are young little blue herons, all from a few days old to 6 weeks old.  They will turn blue after their first full molt in about a year. The blue herons nest in the bushes over the alligator’s exhibit at the zoo. It’s funny to watch them at that crazy phase. The older ones were just starting to flap their wings.

Linking to Wednesday Around The World

Wild baby birds at the zoo

On By dinajohnstonIn bird photography3 Comments

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Baby little blue herons at various ages.

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Above are almost grown tricolored herons.

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A snowy egret was watching her eggs. They had not hatched yet.

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Baby house sparrows were being fed. The nest was high up in the roof of the ticket booth. I heard the babies chirping as I walked in and stopped to snap the above.

Besides the usual animals you see at the zoo, you can usually find wild baby birds growing up in the spring at Lowry Park Zoo.  I found all of these in late May.