An almost perfect morning out

On October 22, 2025October 22, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography8 Comments

It was an almost perfect morning at the end of May at Fort Desoto Park. It was too warm to be perfect and there wasn’t a breeze on the beach.

A snowy egret was fishing for breakfast.

Red knots are threatened in Florida due to loss of habitat. The beach in Fort Desoto is critical to their survival as they stop over here to feed during migration. There was a small flock still feeding that hadn’t left yet for the tip of South America for the summer.

The sky and tidal pool were filled with royal and sandwich terns.

I caught a few of them taking a late morning bath.

A tiny Wilson’s plover stops to pose for me.

One of the resident white morph reddish egrets was dancing for his fish.

Dancing egret on the beach.

On May 28, 2012May 29, 2012 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography15 Comments

“Hmm, is that a fish I see?”

“Wait, there is fish over here too?”

“I think I see one.”

“Missed!”

“Got it”

“I guess I’ll pose now for the picture.”

Do you ever wonder what birds are thinking? The above is a reddish egret in white morph color. I don’t think they are very common. There are a few at Fort Desoto and those are the only ones I’ve seen. They are not skittish at Fort Desoto. This one was feeding in a very shallow lagoon right were the main traffic is to get to the best part of the beach. I plopped down on the sand and just sat there for a good half hour watching this bird run around feeding. They are very animated and do a drunken dance to catch the fish. They put their wings up to shade the water so they can see the fish better. A man walked by with his kids and said “Look at that bird dancing.” It was nice to see people noticing how unusual this bird is.

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