Phil Lanoue Photography

Evening Flight

An egret heads across the marsh this evening just above the water, which was warmed by setting sunlight.

Nap Time

Well our five pink visitors are still here and were found napping in the middle of the day (some life, who do they think they are? Alligators?!?) in the marsh this afternoon.

All was peaceful and quiet until one decided it was time to go and leapfrogged over his friend on the way out.

This morning we had a couple of spoonbills feeding in the salt marsh with a group of wood storks. Everyone got along just fine for the most part until it seemed as if one wood stork developed a bit of an attitude.

The spoonbills seemed quite perplexed about what exactly was going on, so they decided to vacate the premises.

Soon they were high tailing it across the marsh, flying off to go join their pink buddies at the far back edge of the pond.

Unwanted Attention

A great blue heron plucked out a nice size fish for himself at the marsh yesterday morning and that attracted the attention of several wood storks.

The storks were really hoping the heron would drop his fish, and were doing their best to make that happen, but big blue managed to keep and eat his prize!

Fun With Spoonbills!

Yesterday evening we had four spoonbills show up (finally) in the marsh area. So we had to go over this morning to see if they stayed through the night.

Initially we only saw the one. He seemed a bit overwhelmed at being surrounded by wood storks for most of the time, but he also made the best of the situation. At one point the lone spoonie decided to have a little fun and he picked up a lost wood stork feather and played around with that for a while.

Finally I spotted one of his buddies flying in from across the marsh, he did one slow circle then landed in to join his friend.

They were quite active and one even tried giving his spoonie pal a hard time by nipping at the tail feathers a bit.

Soon the last two came gliding in together and the entire crew was together again. Of course Mr. You Know Who had to get involved. Perhaps he remembers these guys from last summer and wanted to make they understand that he is in charge of the entire area. (well until a bigger alligator comes along)

When we it started to rain we left while the four pink friends appeared to be settling in for some grooming and a nice afternoon nap. Fun morning out there for sure!

Spoonbills Surprise Everybody

We had a few spoonbills show up in the marsh this evening which was a bit of a shock because we had practically given up on seeing any this summer.

Unfortunately they mostly stayed way back against the far edge of the pond area except for a brief visit to the salt marsh.

At one point it seemed an egret was as surprised as the rest of us when three spoonies came by interrupting his preening session. The egret gave them a look as if he was thinking…”what the heck are these goofy pink things?!”

In any case it was good seeing some of our pink visitors and hopefully they will decide to stick around for a while!