Stops along the beach.

I was meeting a friend for lunch on the beach in January and threw my camera in the car to make a few stops on the way home. Since I was close by, my first stop was at the Seaside Seabird Sanctuary. It’s now run by a group of volunteers and they rescue and rehabilitate injured birds.

The sanctuary is shaded by overgrown mangrove trees and wild birds nest high up in them this time of year. Great egrets were working on fixing up their nests.

I could just barely make out baby great blue herons through all of the sticks and leaves. This nest had 2 babies and they were already growing up.

One of the first baby night herons of the season. They usually nest a little later but these guys were already almost as big as their parents.

A pretty pelican face.

This sandhill crane is one of the residents. You can see he’s missing his bottom beak. He’s well fed here.

Much farther north on the water, I stopped back by Weaver Park again. I always see parakeets here. They aren’t hard to miss, screaming so loud all of the time. Looks like they’ll be nesting soon.

The pier was pretty quiet.  Mostly terns and gulls. I was hoping to catch the opsrey diving for fish but there wasn’t any here this afternoon.

Babies and a little hanky panky going on.

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Incoming!  or Outgoing! A parent probably heading out to get food for the nest.

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My first baby great blue herons of the year. These twins were already getting big. The nest was straight up in a tree so these were taken across the pond and cropped up.

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Looks like this couple were just getting started. They have a while before they have babies to feed. There were two nests in this tree. It’s going to be a busy baby season here.

The wild great blue herons were already having babies over the alligator exhibit at Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park.