Great Horned Owl On Nest

While Tammy and I were in Everglades National Park, we heard from another visitor (who, in turn, had heard from a local birding club doing a Christmas Bird Count) of where we could see a Great Horned Owl sitting on a nest. I love seeing owls, so I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to see one on a nest. Tammy and I found the nest, but were later told by a park ranger not to advertise the location because the nest might get endangered.

At first I was thinking that the danger was simply too much human interest in the nest and the stress to the birds that would accompany the human traffic. But the park ranger explained that an owl's nest was a target for egg collectors. Egg collecting?

Okay. Obviously there was something here that I was (and still am) a bit naive about. A few Google searches later, however, and I have learned a new word: oology. The collection of wild bird eggs is an old hobby that evolved into something much more formal and science based. The collection of eggs, however, has some serious conflicts of interest. An egg taken for something as positive sounding as scientific study is an egg that will not hatch into a new generation, which puts even more pressure on a species that might need all the help it can get. Here is an article written for the October 2005 edition of Birder's World magazine that provides very good background on this subject. And here is a letter to the editor of a magazine called Birds and All Nature, published in May 1899 (yes...1899!) that provides a decidedly negative opinion of the collection of eggs. Ironically, the letter writer also states that collecting and mounting specimens of birds is not all that bad.

So, here is that Great Horned Owl sitting on her nest. I took this photo from an undisclosed located within Everglades National Park. Hopefully one more generation of owl will fledge from this nest.

Black-necked Stilt

About five years ago, I took a winter trip to southern Florida that included a few nights in Everglades National Park. I stayed in a cabin in Flamingo. This was when I first started getting into birdwatching, and before I even owned a DSLR camera. That trip to Florida was fantastic.

While in the Everglades during that trip, I would explore some trail of the park during the morning hours, and then return to my cabin mid-afternoon. After a bit of food and rest, I would then walk over to a place called Eco Pond to look for more birds, sometimes staying until it got too dark to see anything. Eco Pond was simply a half-mile hike around a pond that had a tree covered island in its middle. But there were alligators in the pond, and a large variety of birds to be seen.

When Tammy and I visited Everglades National Park this past January, we took time one day to drive all the way down to Flamingo and visit Eco Pond. Between my first trip a few years ago and this one, however, several hurricanes have blown across southern Florida. The then-and-now difference was dramatic: the cabins were gone, the hotel-like lodge at Flamingo was heavily damaged and deserted, the first viewing deck at Eco Pond was gone, and there were fewer trees. I remember seeing specific birds on my first trip in trees that were nowhere to be found on this trip.

A few posts back I shared a picture of an American Crocodile sunning itself on a board at Eco Pond. The photos below show Black-necked Stilts (and some Blue-winged Teals) snagging a convenient meal from Eco Pond. When I look at Flamingo and Eco Pond, I see radical changes relative to what I remember from a few years back. I wonder how the animal kingdom sees it?

Tricolored Heron

Since my previous two posts have been about blue wading birds, I figured I would add a third (while I wait for Super Bowl XLII to resume play in the second half). I guess it is possible for the Tricolored Heron to get confused with either of the other two blue herons, but his white belly and the thin line of white up the front of his neck give him away. You can find Tricolored Heron pretty much all year long along the gulf coast and up the east coast to about North Carolina. I have seen them in eastern Virginia in the warmer months.

This photo is another from Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park, taken last month. While the line of white up his neck is not visible here, his white belly is obvious.

Little Blue Heron

The name Little Blue Heron makes that species sound like the little brother of the Great Blue Heron. If you are comparing the Little Blue to the Great Blue, then yes...it is true that the Little Blue is "little", but it is not really a small bird. And while both the Little Blue and the Great Blue do have blue coloration (most of the time), the Great Blue really seems more gray to me, and the Little Blue is leaning towards purple (or, maybe it is indigo).

Regardless of the idiosyncrasies of his common name, the Little Blue Heron is a beautiful bird. Here is a photo of an adult, in all his blue-ish glory, found near the Anhinga Trail within Everglades National Park. He appears to be very serious about finding his next meal.

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Herons are pretty common birds. I can find them year round in Virginia, so seeing them in Florida is never really a priority. But they are such good subjects for photography. They are large, so you don't have to worry much about being too far away. And, they are usually very still or slow moving, so you don't have to fight to keep them in frame or focus.

I like this photo of a Great Blue Heron. He looks a bit wind blown, and that yellow eye makes him look a bit grumpy.

American Bittern

While Tammy and I were on Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park we were lucky enough to notice an American Bittern standing in the tall grass just next to the boardwalk. An American Bittern likes to sit verrrry still. This behavior, combined with its striped color pattern, gives it a very effective disguise in tall grass and reeds. It is very easy to walk right past this species and never notice it.

Like most parks that are easily accessed by lots of people, the majority of the wildlife goes unnoticed by the masses. This was the case on Anhinga Trail. Everyone "oooohed" and "ahhhed" over the large birds and the alligators that were impossible not to see. But hardly anyone noticed the small song birds, or this American Bittern. Only when someone stops to take photos, or obviously pay attention to some creature, will others stop to see what the fuss is all about. This phenomenon is the same as the traffic jams that I described in Yellowstone National Park.

Here are a couple photos of the American Bittern. Maybe some of the folks who saw me perched on the edge of the boardwalk taking pictures of this bird will remember that they completely missed this animal's presence. And then maybe they will wonder just how many other things they are missing. If you don't know something is there, then it is probable that you are not thinking about conserving it.

Anhinga

When in Florida, you are almost certain to see an Anhinga at some point. When traveling on Anhinga Trail within the Everglades, your odds get even better. Often you will see Anhinga perched in a bush or tree, or even on something like a light pole, with their black and silvery wings spread out, as if someone had hung them out to dry on an invisible clothesline. Ironically, that is not very far from the truth.

Anhinga do not have waterproofed feathers (unlike ducks). This allows them to swim under water in search for food. But when they do exit the water, they need to dry their feathers to make flying easier (or possible).

Here are a couple of photos of an Anhinga taken from Anhinga Trail. The first shows the typical drying pose. The second is a close-up of the face that highlights the greenish color of the facial skin that males acquire during breeding.

You may notice that these photos are smaller than the photos that have previously appeared in this blog. This is simply a factor of the time required to manage my photos and post entries to this blog. My previous photo hosting choice (Phanfare) automatically gave me pictures that were resized to be 700 pixels on the long side. My new photo hosting choice (Flickr) automatically gives me pictures that are resized to be 500 pixels on the long side. I have been telling myself that I will continue to manually create resized pictures in Flickr that are my usual 700 pixels on the long side, but this appears to be taking more time that I would like, and it has the side-effect of creating clutter within my photo collection at Flickr. So, for now, I will be putting my blogged pictures on a diet, and linking in the 500 pixel version. If you click on a picture, you will be redirected to that photo within my collection at Flickr, where you can see lots of other sizes of the photo (all constructed automatically by Flickr), look at other photos from me, leave comments on specific pictures, and all kinds of other Flickr goodness.

American Crocodile

While inside Everglades National Park, we saw plenty of American Alligators. I was assuming, however, that all of the large alligator-looking reptiles were, well...alligators. My assumption was quite wrong. It turns out that the only place in the world where you can see alligators and crocodiles in the same habitat is South Florida.

Tammy and I took a stroll around Eco Pond, near Flamingo, and there was an alligator laying out in the sun on a piece of wood. We overheard another person, however, talking about the crocodile. When we inquired about our apparent misidentification, we learned that what we thought was just one more alligator was, in fact, an American Crocodile. Later we got word that there was another crocodile hanging around the marina in Flamingo. When we checked it out, we were delighted to see another American Crocodile poking its head up out of the water under the dripping sprayer on a hose, almost like it enjoyed the mini-shower.

Bald Headed Birds

Tammy and I visited Everglades National Park one day this week to check out the wildlife. One of our stops in the park was Anhinga Trail, where we found lots of birds and alligators. Two of the more abundant species of bird were Black Vulture and Wood Stork, neither of which have feathers on their head. Yeah, they are ugly, but they are still cool birds.

Perhaps it was the RV parking area, or maybe a nearby dumpster, but the vultures seemed to enjoy hanging out in the parking lot. The storks were scattered along the trail, anywhere there was shallow marshy water for them to poke about in search of food.