Fly away free big bird!

Posted on March 18, 2023 by dinajohnston

I was meeting a friend for lunch over at the beach and stopped at nearby Seaside Seabird Sanctuary for a quick walk. The sanctuary rescues and rehabilitates over 10,000 birds a year and most get released but some are permanently disabled and live their lives out here. Many are missing wings, eyes or parts of their beaks. I noticed in the one of the pelican enclosures that they were starting to nest. When the babies are born they are released into the wild. It looks like one of the pelicans didn’t understand the nest concept.

Some of the couples were just starting to get frisky in late January. It looks like the lady was missing an eye.

This one in the back of the enclosure was stretching his mouth. He was also missing an eye.

They release injured birds once they are better (some may have gotten sick from red tide) and I happened to be there the afternoon they were doing a big release. Since the sanctuary sits right on the beach they are able to set them free right here.

The volunteers walked the pelicans down to the shore and let them go. Most took off immediately but a few hung around the beach for a while before flying away. I’m sure for the volunteers it makes all the work worthwhile to see them fly away. If you notice they are all holding the pelican’s beak open as they carry them out to the beach. Pelicans don’t have noses. They breath through their beaks so it’s important that someone rescuing an injured pelican doesn’t hold the beak closed.

Out on the beach

Posted on August 30, 2022 by dinajohnston

Out on the beach while watching the black skimmers feeding their babies I caught an osprey flying by with what I thought was some nesting material. Since it’s late for nesting, I think there’s a small fish in there and he grabbed seaweed with his fish, a nice little salad to go with his sushi.

Other than royal terns bathing, it was a quiet morning.

I stopped by the Seaside Seabird Sanctuary to see if there were any herons or egrets still nesting in the mangrove trees. I found a very young black capped night heron walking around under his nest.

Up above another baby saw Mom fly in nearby and started screaming to be fed.

The baby was going crazy for a while before Mom finally passed that fish over to him.

An older juvenile was watching me take pictures from high up in the trees.

Stops along the beach.

Posted on March 19, 2022 by dinajohnston

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.