A cold cloudy walk along the waterfront

On April 2, 2025May 11, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography7 Comments

I love these winter mornings in mid-January. It’s nice to be able to wear long sleeve shirts and a light jacket during my morning walk. I was at the Safety Harbor waterfront and it was 55 degrees. I could just barely make out the Tampa skyline across the bay.

The tide was low and there was still a lot of pier debris in the water from the hurricanes. New stuff floats in with every tide. After my walk along the water and Main Street I headed back to my car at the marina.

I noticed pelicans sitting in the tall mangroves along the back of the marina so I got my camera out of the car and snapped the above.

I was watching a cormorant (the orange beaked bird on the left) swimming around just under the water and was waiting for him to surface back up, hopefully with a fish. All of a sudden I noticed a horned grebe swimming up. They are not that common here but some winters we get a few of them passing through.

Two cormorants were synchronized swimming, passing right in front of me.

Then I realized there were 2 horned grebes. They are tiny diving ducks with beautiful red eyes.

A female anhinga stands guard on the channel marker.

A pelican flies close by.

The pelicans were diving for fish close to the marina and the laughing gulls would swoop in and try to steal the fish from their pouches when they brought their faces up. In the 2nd shot I caught a Forster’s tern (on the right) diving for a fish.

A yellow crowned night heron flies by and lands in the nearby muck.

Then a great blue heron flew by me and landed in front of the night heron. The night heron started quickly walking away. He wasn’t going to argue with a great blue heron that “he was here first”.

Watching the rain coming at me

On March 10, 2025April 10, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography2 Comments

It was a yucky day on Black Friday of Thanksgiving weekend. I usually avoid shopping areas on this day and decided since it wasn’t nice outside I would head to a small beach in between Tampa and St. Pete. As soon as I got there I could see skimmers (in the first shot) and oystercatchers (in the 2nd shot) cruising by.

The sandbar was visible since it was low tide and I could barely make out the pelicans, gulls and terns enjoying the quiet over there.

A Forster’s tern was taking a bath.

The little beach was full of royal terns with a few laughing gulls and other terns.

A cute Wilson’s plover has a snack.

Ring billed gulls only spend the winters here and I’ve seen just a few at every beach.

I was actually at the beach to look for this guy. The saltmarsh sparrow was a lifer for me. This was the first time I had heard of one being in the area but there had been a few coming through years earlier. He had been spotted a few days earlier and was still there on that rainy morning. They hide out in marsh areas with high vegetation and I waited a while before seeing him pop out for a few minutes.

I could see the rain moving across the bay and heading for me. On a sunny day this little beach off Gandy bridge would be packed and would have made the sparrow harder to find since he would have been hiding farther away in the bushes.

Linking to A Stroll Thru Life.

Another avocet sighting

On January 4, 2024December 24, 2023 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography6 Comments

In early October I heard there was a juvenile flamingo at Fred Howard Park in Tarpon Springs. It was late afternoon and I decided not to wait until the next morning to head to the park so I packed up and drove over even though it looked like it was going to rain.

On the back side of the little beach there were tons of shorebirds. As I was looking for the flamingo (which I didn’t find) I saw 2 avocets standing alone near the shorebirds. Even though I had just seen 19 of them at Fort Desoto a few weeks before I was still excited to see these 2. They stuck pretty close together.

It was getting late in the day and the laughing gulls were starting their bedtime baths.

A few of the other shorebirds nearby included a Forster’s tern, a ruddy turnstone and a dowitcher.

A great blue heron flies by.

I was hoping the sun would peak out when it got late but it didn’t look like that was going to happen so I left. I did manage to see that juvenile flamingo on another trip so more on that later.

A day at the pier

On April 13, 2023April 2, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography, Florida animals9 Comments

It was a perfect morning for spending some time sitting on a bench at the Oldsmar pier. As I walked out on the pier I noticed a small “fever” of stingrays in the shallow water. I took the above with my phone. They were pretty close and it was cool to watch them slowly swim out in the bay.

In late February the wintering ducks were still there. A few came close to the pier. Looks like they were lesser scaup.

I often see dolphins here but they are usually so far out in the bay that they look like little dots. This morning there were two that came swimming close to the pier. They were feeding and herding the fish close to the shallow part to feed easier. They splashed around for a few minutes before heading back out to the bay.

The dolphins headed straight into the floating ducks and off they went.

An osprey and a Forster’s tern flew close to the pier.

Far across the bay I could see an eagle chasing an osprey. The eagle was after his fish which he stole from the osprey but then took off in the opposite direction.