A tale of two lakes

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I caught this squirrel eating right next to the hummingbird feeder.

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The only decent shot I got. I forgot to bring my tripod and even though I had my monopod, the light was awful. The feeder was in the shade so I wasn’t able to get a good picture of the hummer hovering over the feeder.

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Bug on a ball. Lettuce Lake Park in north Tampa was quiet on a Saturday morning in late June. So I did what any respectable birder would do. I left and went somewhere else.

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Twin Lakes is not a park. Just a lake at the entrance to a subdivision in what I call is the boonies. This subdivision should win a prize for one of the top birding neighborhood spots in Tampa. Constant traffic, dog walkers and joggers going around this little lake. The first thing I spotted was a baby moorhen.

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A mom and younger baby was close by.

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The baby was getting a bite from Mom. It’s funny to see his little wings go so fast when he was getting his food.

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The above juvenile grackle was chasing after his parent for food.

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I had heard there were baby purple gallinules at the lake. I first saw the adults coming out of the leaves right in the middle of the pond.

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Then I saw three tiny black dots. These are highly cropped taken with my 300mm lens.

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The parents stayed close to the babies.

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Walking around, the parent must have been looking for food.

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The baby is so tiny. He could only be a few days old. There must have been another family with older babies because I had read about them over a week earlier.

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I don’t know what that was she had in her mouth but it didn’t look like food.

Not too bad for a walk around two different parks. Even though it’s summer and hot and not many birds around, there’s still a lot to see out there.

Camera Critters

Watching a baby barred owl

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My first encounter with a baby barred owl. Although he’s almost grown up, he still has a little fuzz. This bird just stole my heart. I had been at Lettuce Lake park for almost two hours and was walking back to the parking area when a very nice guy just said “Hey, I just saw an owl fly into that tree right there.” I had looked everywhere in that area when I first got there looking for the owls and didn’t find them. I walked down the path and at first I saw the parent that had just flown in. I was watching it for a few minutes when I noticed a few trees over was the baby. Looking right at me. He was a little ways into the woods so these are all cropped up.

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I thought he was curious about something on the tree. He hunched down getting closer to the branch.

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He then closed his eyes and took a short nap right there. I walked around the area for a while. I saw a hummingbird go by me and looked around for a long time trying to find it. It went deeper in the woods so I lost it.

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I came back over to the napping owl and he was just waking up. A loud hawk flew overhead and he looked up to see it.

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Then he was fully awake.

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I don’t know if this was a sneeze or the end of a yawn but he made a funny face.

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He started investigating around the branch.

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He was probably thinking “What are these big yellow things?”

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“Hey, I can hold something with these big yellow things.” It looked like he was eating a leaf.

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The parent was a few trees down keeping an eye on things. I finally left an hour later than I should have but what a great way to spend that hour.

What started out as a boring birding trip ended up being one of the best times I’ve had in a while. Watching that cute baby owl was the highlight of the trip. As I stood on the trail watching the owl deep in the woods, people were walking by heading to the canoe launch. Everyone would ask me what I was looking at. I would show them the owl up in the tree. A few people got really excited. A handful said “Yeh, I see owls here all the time.” It’s funny how different people react to birds.

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