Breakfast with a limpkin family

On January 16, 2013January 4, 2013 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography7 Comments

I turn the corner to head down Marsh Rabbit Run trail and see the above standing in the middle of the trail. He didn’t seem spooked by me.

In fact, he walked right by me. That’s my shadow. I’ve never seen them this close before. Then I realized there were 3 others close together in the ditch below the trail. They all came up on the trail and I realized it was a family. Two parents and two almost grown babies. This was one of the late summer families.

They all seemed very relaxed as I sat down on the trail and watched them.

One of the parents brought up a snail from the ditch.

The smaller one ran under mom and waited while she dug out the meat.

Then the parent ate one herself. Doesn’t that look yummy?

The other juvenile got fed.

What a way to start the walk down the trail. I sat there for about 20 minutes watching them bring up snail after snail. This has to be the most tame family in the park. A crowd of photographers started to gather behind me and we were all amazed that they didn’t seem bothered by us. After a while the family went back down into the ditches and headed out into the marsh. I headed down the trail to see what I could find but nothing else could match that.

Ball of white fuzz

On May 30, 2012May 16, 2012 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography6 Comments

Baby swans are like cotton balls with feet and a beak. There were two at Lake Morton in Lakeland the morning I stopped by. The first picture was of a baby in a pen. The park rangers put the baby with the parents in a pen for a few weeks until the baby gets a little older and is not so vulnerable to all the dangers. There are a lot there. Eagles and hawks fly over and grab tiny things. Geese, ducks and other swans fight over territory and can be aggressive towards babies. Dogs in the neighborhoods around the lake can get out. It’s a scary life for a baby swan. The fenced in pens have space on the lake as well as grass for them to stay on.

I had been stopping by the lake almost every weekend for a while checking for babies with no luck. Finally, I got word from Jess that she had seen a baby on Friday afternoon and that by Monday the park rangers would put it in the pen. I met up with her on Sunday morning thinking I would stop for a quick visit and ended up staying for almost 3 hours. These cute little fuzz balls stole our hearts and everyone else’s who stopped by. We also saw a handful of baby ducks that morning. More on those later.

Not all ibis are the same.

On April 22, 2012April 18, 2012 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography6 Comments

A glossy ibis hanging out with a pied grebe.

Two glossy ibis hanging out together. Notice the white trim around the beak area?

I had heard there was a white faced ibis hanging around Wading Bird Way trail at Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland. They are fairly rare here in central Florida. I got to the area thinking maybe it won’t be too hard to find since there aren’t that many glossy ibis around but the marsh area was full of glossy ibis. It wasn’t until I got home and cropped up this picture and noticed it was a white faced. They are similar to the glossy but have more pink around the beak and more white feathers. The adults have red eyes all year round. So this was first sighting for me.

Above is several white ibis feeding with a tricolored heron and a snowy egret.

One of the coolest things I noticed when I first moved here over 10 years ago from Atlanta, was driving through neighborhoods and seeing flocks of white ibis feeding in people’s yards. That was something I didn’t see when I lived in Atlanta. I immediately looked up the bird in my mom’s Florida water bird book to see what it was. For years I thought all ibis where white (or with brown spots if it’s a juvenile). Then I was out in a park years later and saw what looked like a white ibis but it was black, or dark in color. I looked that up and found out it was a glossy ibis. Then I heard about a rare white faced ibis here in the Tampa bay area but I never did see it. Finally, years later I have seen a white faced ibis.

An otter eating, a snake being eaten and some birds.

On April 2, 2012April 3, 2012 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography22 Comments

I’m standing along Marsh Rabbit Run trail at Circle B Bar Reserve trying to take pictures of the baby sandhill cranes. There were several other photographers there and we were all being quiet while hoping the cranes would get a little closer to the trail. All of a sudden we heard this loud crunch right behind us. We all turned around and saw this otter eating what we thought was a small turtle. He was chowing down pretty hard and making a loud crunching noise. It was almost as if he was saying “Hey guys, I’m back here.” He eventually finished it and swam off.

On Wading Bird Way, I see a great blue heron having a hard time with a snake. I took these right into the sun so they didn’t turn out to great but it was pretty funny watching him fight the snake.

He seemed to look back at me like “Can you help me with this?”

He kept shaking his head and the snake unwrapped around his beak but they continued to fight for a while. Eventually, the heron got the snake down. It made me wonder if the birds ever get bitten by a poisonous snake. Will they die if they get bite? And if they swallow the snake whole while it’s still alive, can the snake bite their stomach? It’s a tough life being a bird.

These blue winged teals didn’t get the memo telling them to go home for the summer. These were the only ones I saw in the park and they were feeding together in a tight group. The tricolored heron was sneaking by them, probably trying to see what they were eating.

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