The butterfly garden at Folly Farms in Safety Harbor was exploding with color when I visited in early March. The big freeze a month earlier didn’t seem to harm most of these plants.
Cool artwork in the garden.
The garden is full of whimsical things including the bee house in the 2nd shot above.
A butterfly sitting still as I took the above with my phone. I think he was warming up in the sun.
There’s a short trail along the back area of the gardens and I took a quick lap before heading home.
It was almost the end of March and I hadn’t been out for a spin around the neighborhood in a while so I hopped on my bike after lunch and took off. The first pond I stopped at had a little alligator floating in the middle.
After taking the picture of the alligator I noticed a pair of anhingas down along the pond. Both the female (with the brown neck) and the male (all black) where fanning out their wings to dry out so they must have been feeding here. I could almost imagine she was smiling at me.
There was a soft shell turtle sunning himself on the other side of the pond.
The next pond I stopped at had the usual birds. A great blue heron taking a break and a little blue heron creeping along the shoreline.
Butterflies were out at the utility field.
The bottlebrush trees were blooming all over the neighborhood. They attract hummingbirds but I didn’t see any this morning. I stopped at a few of them and waited for a while but all I saw were bees. It might have been a little early for hummingbirds to come through but I had heard there were some sighted nearby.
I stopped by the eagle’s nest when I saw the eagle sitting up on the tower. Mom was still hanging around even though she lost her mate and babies in late January (I wrote about what happened in this post). It looked like she had a stick in her talon. She flew to the nest and sat up there for a while. It was really too late for her to re-nest again even though she had a new boyfriend.
The boyfriend was sitting on top of the next tower. He still has some brown in his head. He’s been hanging around for a while. Now it’s mid-May and they are both gone and I will have to wait until late September or October to see if they come back.
