There’s always lots of fun critters at Crescent Lake park near downtown St. Pete.
I caught this ibis trying to eat a frog in the middle of the road.
The fungus on this old tree looks like icing on a cake.
I found a few white pelicans floating around the downtown St. Pete sea wall.
Things at the small beach area on the bay side of St. Petersburg (know as The Burg) in late December.
A few monk parakeets were flying around the parking lot.
It was low tide on the beach and very few people were there so the shorebirds were napping. Although, something kept spooking them and they would all take off flying in a circle and then come land in the same spot.
There were two white pelicans floating around in the area around the beach. They were hanging out with a bunch of cormorants. They stayed pretty far out in the water so these were all extremely cropped.
I rarely go the tiny beach next to downtown St. Pete. It’s usually pretty busy and there’s a big public swimming pool in the parking lot. I was in the area so I stopped and talk a quick walk in the sand. It was fairly early in the morning so there wasn’t anyone on the beach. The paved trail along the side of it was packed with people walking, jogging, biking and walking their dogs. It was a normal weekend rush hour traffic on the trails.
Not the bird I was looking for. This osprey right next to the boat ramp did not want me to steal his fish.
This could have been the bird I was looking for but as he got closer I realized it wasn’t a great cormorant but just an ordinary double crested cormorant. This one flew over my head and was full of fishing wire.
Downtown St. Petersburg from the boat ramp.
Still not the bird I was looking for, this spotted sandpiper was trying to hide in the weeds that had floated up on the beach.
No great cormorant on this side of the park. Only shorebirds and gulls.
Maybe he hitched a ride on one of these boats.
Back in mid-December I had heard there was a rare great cormorant hanging around the boat ramp at Fort Desoto. This would have been a first for me so I finally made it down to the park after work on the night before Thanksgiving. It had been raining for days and it was nice to see blue skies again. This was my first of 3 trips looking for this silly bird with no luck. Hopefully he will show up when I least expect it.
Check out more sky pictures at 