Phil Lanoue Photography

One Fish…Two Fish

If one fish is good, two must be better. An egret in the salt marsh this afternoon was only getting better at catching fish as the day went on. He went from snatching one at a time to getting two with one grab.

Very nicely done and a good job by our egret friend!

Well At Least Somebody Was Working Hard Today

Early this afternoon I saw an osprey circling out over the marsh and diving down several times trying to get himself a lunch. A short time later he swooped over and landed in a dead tree with his meal which by now turned out to be a partially chewed fish. He must have taken an in flight bite.

In any case he seemed quite proud and happy with himself over his fresh caught seafood entrée.

Now over on the other side of the marsh… an individual (who shall remain nameless) was taking the opposite approach to the day. Hard work clearly was not part of the plan because I never saw him so much as crack open an eye.

I didn’t feel it was my place to criticize, so I left our napping friend alone to enjoy his snooze in the sun.

Still At It

Well our four pink visitors are still here and still hard at work feeding in the salt marsh.

Sometimes they work as a team, other times they get a surprise guest appearance by a little snowy.

We are still happy to see these guys and hope they continue to enjoy the marsh.

Well That May Have Been Unexpected

Despite it being a grey, rainy, and super windy day over at the salt marsh, we still had the four visiting spoonies out doing their thing.

They seemed to be in a feeding frenzy and perhaps they are stuffing themselves in anticipation of more foul weather coming in, or they might be planning to fly back south soon.

In any case it’s still great to have them around and they sure help brighten a cloudy day.

At one point the adult spoonbill came swooping in landing next to a juvie. I’m not sure if the adult caught the youngster in mid preen or if he was just scratching his head, but he sure appeared surprised when the older bird dropped in on him.

Finally the rain sent me off but I left our quartet busily feeding away…

Monday Mink

This afternoon we had a cute little mink pop his head up out of the reeds at the edge of the salt marsh and scamper around for a bit.

Always great to see these guys, they remind me of skinny cats running around out there!

Sunday Spoonbills

Well all four spoonbills are still in the marsh area which is good news. The big pink guys are doing their thing and creating excitement as always.

Today we had three of the four hanging around in the general vicinity.

One did a couple of circles and fly by’s over the marsh, the oldest one of the group seemed happy to spend the day with the wood storks, and the third spoonie was mostly just feeding in the salt marsh popping down some tasty glass shrimp.

Gotta love a pink Sunday!

Squeaky

This afternoon we had a loud squeaky visitor at the salt marsh. A belted kingfisher flew in, landed on a stump for about two seconds then took off again.

These tiny, fast birds continue to mock me and drive me crazy with their sarcastically squeaky voices which can be heard from a considerable distance.

Also last night my computer monitor cashed in it’s chips and I’m currently working (well trying to) on a back up monitor which as best as I can tell is from 1986. I can’t tell how anything looks on this thing.

Saw a lot of bird action this afternoon too. The spoonies were out, GBH’s were flying all over as were wood storks, but I’m not really sure how any of it looks.

I’m flying blind out here right now.

So That’s Where He Was Going!

On a recent late afternoon I was checking out the salt marsh but did not expect much activity due to the high tide.

Out of the corner of my eye I barely managed to catch a glimpse of this blue heron before he got by me. He was zipping along rather quickly and I wondered what the emergency destination could possibly be.

Well it turned out he needed to immediately be playing king of the hill on top of this dead tree at the east side of the marsh. I’m sure this afforded the master of his domain an excellent view.