Fish were jumping on my walk

On August 27, 2025September 6, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn Florida animals4 Comments

In mid-May I started out at Fred Howard Park in Tarpon Springs for a walk on the causeway. School was still in and the beach area was nice and quiet. I didn’t stay long and on the way home I decided to stop at Wall Springs Park for another walk.

This a small park but has a great 3 story observation tower. I usually take the stairs up to the top and the ramp back down.

From the top you can see out to the gulf. As I was walking back down the long ramp I noticed that a lot of the taller trees did not have any leaves on them. I’m assuming this is from the hurricanes that came through last fall. I hope they grow back in the next year and aren’t completely dead.

The mullet were jumping. It’s fun to see them jump out of the water but it’s hard to time it just right. Sometimes they jump out twice so I was ready with my phone. I’ve read that you can catch mullet with a fishing pole but it’s rare and hard to do. Most people catch them with cast netting. My husband loves smoked mullet but I’m not a fan.

I took some quick videos of them jumping as I stood on the dock in the shallow area.

Some other type of fish swimming by the dock.

A walk on the causeway

On June 4, 2025July 10, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography9 Comments

It was pretty cloudy when I first got out to the end of the causeway at Fred Howard Park in early March. It was supposed to be a sunny morning. The sun was just coming up behind the clouds and it looked like the cormorants were just waking up. I’m thinking they must sleep here on the backside of the little beach because it’s closed at night so they probably don’t get bothered.

The clouds were starting to part as I walked the causeway.

A lone great blue heron was standing on the rail. He let me get pretty close before taking off when more people stopped to look. I took the above with my phone.

A little later I saw a lot of cormorants hanging out on the rocks on the jetty. They must move to the jetty as more people show up on the beach.

A view of the island beach area from half way down the causeway.

Why did the ruddy turnstone cross the road??!??

A great egret was keeping an eye on the nearby fisherman, hoping to steal his bait.

Water toys lined up waiting for the tourists. It was going to warm up later in the afternoon so I’m sure many would get used.

A little blue heron was dancing for his fish.

The sun was fully out by the time I got back to my car.

This is the best time to be out on the beach, before 9am in March.

There were a few birds out on the beach before I left. Royal terns looked small standing around that juvenile herring gull in the middle. Skimmers were staying close to the water.

Looking for ducks before my walk

On March 26, 2025April 10, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography7 Comments

At the beginning of January I went out for a walk and stopped to look for ducks first. Not just any ducks but wintering ducks. Every winter the water reclamation facility pond in Tarpon Springs fills up with winter ducks. When I got out of the car I saw a robin under the tree and quickly snapped the above before walking over to the pond.

The top picture was about half the ducks. They were all redheads. Usually there’s a mix of redheads, lesser scaup and ring-necked ducks. In the past if you zoom in and look closely you can find a random rare duck but all I saw this morning were redheads. The males have the red heads and the females are all brown. They will leave by the end of February.

As I was watching the ducks a few more robins landed in front of me.

Zooming in on the redheads, many were taking early morning baths.

Since I was up at Tarpon Springs I did a quick walk on the causeway at Fred Howard Park. The tide was super low again and the sky was clear. It was 58 degrees. I wish it would stay this way through at least May but that won’t happen. Winters here are so short.

On my way home I stopped at Craig Park on the bayou. The boats for the Greek Epiphany celebration were already in the water, a few days before the event. I attended the Epiphany a few years earlier and you can read about the event and it’s meaning here.

A 3 park morning

On March 19, 2025April 10, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn Tampa bay sights7 Comments

It was a 3 park morning in early December but all were in Tarpon Springs. I first started out with a walk at the most northern park, Fred Howard Park and Beach. I drove through the park and parked my car just outside the causeway to the little beach area. This was as far as I got. It was all fenced up to get out to the beach while they were still trying to clean up from the hurricanes in late September and early October. The flooding left tons of debris in the sand so they were sifting through to make sure no one gets injured when they open it back up and the parking lot was a big sand mound so they had to get that cleared. (It did open a week after I had made this trip).

As I walked around the park area I noticed most of the trees near the shoreline had their tops broken off.

Vultures were watching me walk around.

My next park was Sunset Beach Park just 5 minutes south of Howard Park. It had already been cleaned up and had just opened up to the public a few days before. I found a small flock of skimmers in the muck when I got out of my car.

The tide was super low this morning. The above were taken on the backside of the beach area.

Zooming in I could see the beach area of Howard Park just north of where I was. This was looking on the side of the island that is covered in boulders. The tide was so low I probably could have walked across the muck to get there.

Zooming in even more I could see great egrets dotting the exposed sand, picking off the exposed sea creatures for a snack.

A great blue heron flies close by.

My last stop on the way home was Craig Park just south of the main tourist area of Tarpon Springs. It’s a small park but has beautiful old trees with branches that touch the ground. It looked like most of the trees here did ok with the hurricanes but this whole park was underwater.

The main attraction here in the winter is the chance to see some manatees. There’s a natural spring here that is warmer than the gulf water and the manatees come into the bayou when it gets really cold. There were at least 10 the morning I was there but since the tide was so low they were huddle in the middle and farther away from the sidewalk. I was able to catch a few on video with their snouts coming up for air.

Two more lifers in one morning.

On June 29, 2024July 13, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography5 Comments

Above is the only picture I got of the yellow breasted chat. I had heard there was one here at Fred Howard Park in Tarpon Springs last spring but I never made it up here to look for it. This year I had to go since I had never seen one before. It had been reported for 3 days before I got there. Early the first morning I looked for 2 hours with 2 other people and had to leave for a dentist appointment with no sighting. People reported it later in the morning so the next morning I went up a little later (around 8:30am). There were at least 20 other people looking in the area it had been seen the day before. After over an hour it made a brief (above) appearance. After waiting another hour I gave up and went for a walk around the rest of the park. It looks a little like the yellow throated warbler but without the black stripes.

There was a Cape May warbler bouncing around in the area where the chat was. This was a banner spring for Cape Mays. They were everywhere.

I found other usual spring migration birds around the park including a prairie warbler, a hooded warbler, a white eyed vireo and a northern parula.

My 2nd lifer of the morning was a Lincoln’s sparrow. He was on the other side of the park from the chat and was scratching around in the dirt along the mangroves near the water.

Above the Lincoln sparrow was a prairie warbler posing nicely in the bushes.

I saw the painted lady butterfly while we were waiting for the chat to show up.

One last look at Howard the pinkie

On January 25, 2024January 17, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography6 Comments

A few days after I had first seen the juvenile flamingo at Fred Howard Park (in Tarpon Springs) I was back out there early in the morning. I had to see if he was still there and sure enough, he was in the same spot. The temperature had dropped and it was chilly (around 55 in the morning) and I was thinking he should have left to head back south.

There’s always a lot of cormorants in this spot on the backside of the beach island.

The sun had come out for a short time and as I was driving on the causeway back to the main park I stopped to catch one last shot of the flamingo from the road. This was the last time I saw this beauty. I checked back several times but he must have finally moved on.

I also caught a skimmer doing what he does, skimmer the top of the water for bait fish. He was heading right for me but turned at the last minute.

I stopped by the Dunedin causeway before heading home and saw this big mix of shorebirds along the beach there. Most were skimmers but there were a few terns, gulls and dowitchers mixed in. The sun had gone behind the clouds and it was started to get dark.

A pair of blue winged teals flew by.

By mid-morning I could see the rain far north over land, where I had been an hour before. I was hoping to see some lightning but there was none this morning.

The sun kept peeking out between the rain clouds and I dipped on a rainbow as well.

Lots of shorebirds

On January 13, 2024January 1, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography3 Comments

While I was at Fred Howard Park waiting for the flamingo to wake up from his nap I noticed a lot of shorebirds on the back side of the little beach. I saw several black bellied plovers and one was walking towards me with a snack.

There were a lot of black skimmers and many of them were still juveniles, born this past summer. They don’t have the full black head yet.

This juvenile royal tern was still screaming for Mom to bring him some food. This was a common sight on the beaches in the early fall.

The royal terns were taking a bath.

There were a lot of dowitchers. They were poking around in the muck and weeds.

A marbled godwit looking for food.

A “gulp” of cormorants swimming close to the shore.

A cormorant came up out of the water with a big fish and the laughing gulls were attacking him. The cormorant dropped the fish but I don’t think the gulls got it.

Ever once in a while the skimmers would flush and take flight.

It was a nice non-sunny morning out. This was actually a chilly morning for early October. I think it was in the high 50’s when I got out to the park.

Meet “Howard” the pinkie.

On January 11, 2024December 29, 2023 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography8 Comments

I was on my way to Fred Howard Park in Tarpon Springs to look for the flamingo that has been hanging around the beach there for a few days. Random wild flamingos were showing up all over the Tampa bay area. They had been blown in during Hurricane Idalia as it passed by us. It was dark and cloudy but it looked like it was breaking up and the sun was going to come out. When I first got to the park the sun was coming up and I could see a little bit of blue sky.

I immediately found the juvenile flamingo. He was on the back side of the beach island with a bunch of shorebirds.

I got out of the car and sat down on a grassy area. I was glad I had brought my 500mm lens because he was far away and I wanted to stay in the parking area. At first I was the only one there. Later a few other people showed up but everyone stayed far back.

He (or she) was beautiful. I thought he was much prettier than the bright pink adult flamingos. That pale pink on the face with the creme beak was perfect. Eventually the beak will turn white and pink. It was a little sad that he was all alone. Where were his friends? Will he meet back up with them if he heads south for the winter? So many questions. People were saying they hoped the flamingos would stay but they really belong in south Florida (around the keys) and the Caribbean.

He flew close by and headed to the other side of the tiny beach. This was all I could fit in my lens as he went by.

He hung out for a while with the cormorants.

Above is a short video of him feeding. They move their feet in the water to stir up the stuff on the bottom. They eat algae, brine shrimp and any other tiny plants or critters in the shallow water.

He had 2 short feeding sessions then settled in for a nap so I left.

The sun never did come out while I was there. It was just as well since I would have been shooting straight into the sun if it had been shining.

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 4 park morning

On September 5, 2022August 27, 2022 By dinajohnstonIn Tampa bay sights5 Comments

It was hot as usual at the end of July. I headed out early one morning for a walk at Fred Howard Park in Tarpon Springs. I hadn’t spent a lot of time here, only driven through. I parked in the shaded area of the park and walked out on the causeway that leads to the beach. I was hoping for a breeze but didn’t get much of a whiff this morning but it was a beaufiful morning and I saw several dolphins far out in the gulf.

After my walk at Howard Park, I stopped at nearby Sunset Beach. It’s a small spit of sand but also a small piece of heaven the morning I was there. I imagine it’s packed on the weekends but early this Wednesday morning it was quiet and I sat on the bench for a while, watching more dolphins go by.

And if you forgot to bring a book with you to read on the beach, there’s a free library in the parking lot.

Another quick stop was the Anclote River Park, just north of Tarpon Springs.

A replica of the Anclote lighthouse was in the parking lot. The actual lighthouse is on Anclote Key, only accessible by boat.

One last stop was the Anclote Gulf Park just a few minutes away. I walked out on the long fishing pier and was hoping for dolphins here but didn’t see any.