Tag Archives: wood stork babies

Young old souls

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Wood storks are born looking like old souls. These babies are only a few months old and already look like an old man. I stopped by the bird rookery in north Tampa in mid-April and the little island in the middle of the small lake was full of older babies. Wood storks were the predominant birds with a few great egret and cattle egrets nesting as well.

This rookery is so busy that the families were all on top of each other.

Triplets were posing for me.

Parents were back and forth bringing in food and more padding for the nests.

I think these were the youngest ones there. All still fuzzy and white.

Wood stork babies seem to be more quiet than great egret babies. There wasn’t as much clacking going on.Since the island is in the middle of the lake, these were all taken with my 300mm lens and cropped up.

Linking to Wednesday Around the World.

Dirty beaks

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Flying back and forth from the nest, the wood stork parents stay busy keeping the nests neat and bringing in food.

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The parents of these triplets were busy feeding them. All three of the babies looked healthy. I did notice they all had dirty beaks.

More from the wood stork rookery in north Tampa during my stop in early June.

Linking to Saturday’s Critters

Annual spring fashion show at Gatorland

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Cattle egrets have their flirting makeup on.

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The tricolored herons were showing off as well.

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The snowy egrets were still in the early flirting stage.

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The storks across the lake already had their babies.

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This great blue heron was too busy stuffing his face to care about nesting.

I love the way the birds all change colors during the nesting season. Their feathers and faces get brighter. I didn’t make it to Gatorland in Orlando this year until early May. This was my 7th spring to visit the bird rookery there over the alligator lake. The great egrets nest first and most of those babies were already grown. Cattle egrets and snowy egrets were just having their babies.  Tricolored herons were sitting on nests but didn’t have any babies yet. It’s always fun to see the birds all interacting together.  And yes, I took a ton of pictures that morning so there’s more to come.