Phil Lanoue Photography

Just Mucking About

Our alligator friend was out in the marsh this afternoon just enjoying a pleasant sunny day mucking about the place.
He seemed to be constantly dragging some of the various reeds and grasses along on his journey.
I’m not sure what the whole idea we see here of him putting his rear foot up behind him and resting it on his back.
But who am to question his methods? If it works, it works.

Grey Day At The Marsh

On a grey, cloudy afternoon a snowy egret makes a rather ominous looking landing in the salt marsh during low tide.

I guess snowball was matching the mood of the day with his flight behavior.

Egret Afternoon Fly and Fish

An egret came gliding in across the salt marsh this afternoon, then dropped in for a quick snack.

Playing Horseshoes

On the same day the three spoonbills arrived, we had this big fella sloshing around in the salt marsh during low tide. It quickly became clear what he had caught, although the reveal was more then a bit of a surprise.

Our hungry alligator friend found himself a horseshoe crab and appeared to be extremely excited with his crunchy catch!

As I said, this was very surprising as we had never seen an alligator with a horseshoe crab before and never even saw one in this section of the marsh.

But our pal was thrilled and after plucking the hapless crab up out of the water, he proceeded to crunch and munch the hard shell. (note the teeth marks in photo three)

The plan was to systematically dismantle the crab into smaller, more manageable pieces for ease of swallowing.

He was flinging the horseshoe crab up in the air and at one point had it by the tail while thrashing about wildly.

Finally, after a lengthy struggle, the gator had only a few pieces of shell remaining and those quickly went down the hatch. The entire process stretched out to well over an hour by the time the crusty creature was reduced to only bits, and Mister A seemed quite pleased with himself when it was over. Bad day for a horseshoe crab though for sure.

Spoonbills! In May?!?

In a rare May occurrence for our area, three Roseate Spoonbills came gliding into the salt marsh this morning.

We normally don’t see spoonbills until July or even later in the summer.

These were mature adult birds too, not the young pale juveniles we most often see.

Seeing some of our pink friends early was quite a welcome and pleasant surprise!

After landing in the marsh among the oyster beds, the spoonies hung around for a short time fishing and preening.

The last we saw they were headed north to parts unknown, and although we hope they stick around, I strongly suspect they were only passing through. They stayed for barely 30 minutes, before taking off into the bright blue morning sky.

The last photo shows our good pal Mr. A! But what is he looking so chipper about?!? Could it be something he has hidden beneath him under the swirling water?!? Well tune in tomorrow to find out what has our boy so excited. 🙂