Critters I saw on my walk around Crescent Lake Park.
This big beautiful old banyan tree is fenced off since it is starting to fall apart. It’s still blooming though.
Across the lake. You can barely make out downtown St. Pete behind the painted water tower.
Just a few of the beautiful flowers we found at Aldridge Gardens in Birmingham during my visit with my sister. The weather was too beautiful to do anything indoors so we did a quick walk around the gardens before heading to lunch.
They had bee hives with glass sides. It was really cool to see inside the hive, watching the thousands of bees working.
Some of the critters around the lake. More to come on the gardens.
Watching the big horses grazing in the pasture.
This one was taking a dirt bath.
A few of the fowl I snapped while watching the horses.
I spent another morning relaxing at HorsePower for Kids animal sanctuary. There’s something about watching the ducks swim around the pond and the horses grazing that takes the stress away. I guess because I don’t have to feed them or clean up after them. I can just stop by and chill with the farm animals.
I can always find green herons at this lake.
This looks like a young mallard that’s molting and getting his male feathers in.
Lots of young blue jays.
A grackle with a yummy snack.
A leucistic Eurasian collared-dove. It’s rare to see an all white Eurasian dove.
You can always hear the loud screaming of monk parakeets at this park. They nest in the water tower near the park and spend a lot of time on the grass eating. They blend in really well and unless you hear them screaming, you would never know they were in the trees in front of you.
Crescent Lake Park is a small park near downtown St. Petersburg. There’s a small lake with a sidewalk all around. There’s a ball field next door as well as a dog park and houses across the street on 2 sides of the park. On a Saturday morning, the park is full of joggers, walkers, kids playing and me, the crazy lady with the camera.
Funny faces and pretty flowers can always be found at the Lowry Park zoo. Lots of activity going on in late March. Both wild and resident animals were building nests, flirting and mating. Babies were already starting to hatch. It should be a busy spring.
My first fuzzball sighting of the season. Based on the last picture, more to come. I was at Circle B Bar Reserve and decided to stop by Lake Morton on the way home. I had read on Kim’s blog about the new family there and was hoping I could find them. I found them about half way through my walk around the lake. They were sleeping together on the grass. I sat down on the grass and was watching them sleep for a few minutes when the geese came up on the bank and started to bother the babies. Mom headed into the water with the babies and they hung out along the side of the lake for a while. I think the geese just wanted their spot. All of the above were taken at 200mm and extremely cropped.
A wet green heron was sitting on the dock. It was dark and gloomy all weekend.
Wet blue jay on my feeder.
Wet house sparrow eating.
Looking down the channel, you can’t see our neighbor’s dock. Everything was under water. The water was just starting to creep up into his yard.
Now our dock is under water and water was everywhere.
On Tuesday morning, I looked out the window while I was getting ready for work. This duck family had just climbed on the dock and was taking a nap. They looked tired. The water was just at the top of the dock and by the time I left the water had crept up onto the dock. I don’t know if the family had moved to higher ground yet.
We were all very lucky in our neighborhood. Other than the tide bringing the water levels up, we didn’t really have any damage. A tornado hit in south St. Petersburg and there was significant damage there. It was really just an inconvenience to most people. It rained most of the weekend and on Monday night the tide got so high that several of the bridges were closed. Hubby had to drive the long way around to get home and it took him almost 2 hours since everyone had to go that way. The big Sunshine Skyway Bridge broke a record and was closed for more than 3 days due to high winds. Now it’s August and the summer rains are here so it rains almost every day.
