Phil Lanoue Photography

High Stepping

A tricolored heron does same fancy footwork earlier this week as he hunts for some tasty seafood snacks in the salt marsh during low tide.

Well Finally, A Clean One!

I’ve been giving the white ibis kind of a hard time lately calling them ‘muddy ibis’ and other unflattering terms because of their propensity to be filthy.

They spend so much walking around in mud, which gets their feet muddy. They’re constantly sticking those long curved bills in mud, which gets their faces dirty. Plus they somehow always manage to get mud and dirt all over their feathers.

So it was refreshing when earlier this week I took some flight shots of a passing white ibis and it really was white! And clean! Even its’ feet!

Wow. Amazing. This guy is truly deserving of the name….White Ibis. 🙂

“Get Out and Stay Out!”

An osprey was chased away by a Red-winged Blackbird yesterday morning. The blackbird must have a nest in the area and doesn’t want the osprey getting too comfortable flying around the general area.

The blackbird might be somewhat confused because it’s unlikely that an osprey who prefers fresh caught fish will attack a nest. The hawk would be the more likely culprit in that scenario, but I suppose they all look around the same to a blackbird. In any case, it’s best to be safe when protecting a nest.

Still Here

We went over this morning hoping the new spoonbill arrival was still in the area, and at first we couldn’t see him anywhere.

Finally, to our delight, he showed up and came flying right in to the salt marsh. It was low tide this morning, so I’m sure that appealed to the spoonie because they generally prefer feeding in the shallow water depth of the lower tide.

He walked around for a while doing some casual fishing (or quite likely shrimping) but then he spotted one of his wood stork buddies over at the far back edge of the pond and flew over to join Woody.

We thought he might spend the morning there but after an hour or so many of the wood storks flew over to the salt marsh side to do a little feeding of their own. The spoonbill faithfully followed as they like to pal around with the storks.

But spoonie did not stay long, he lifted his head up, took a look around, and jumped off flying directly across from me. Initially, he flew out toward the ocean but then did a wide overhead circle and the last I saw he was headed for the swamp which is where he likely spent the rest of his day.

Fun seeing the pink guy for a second day and nice to know he is staying around. Hopefully some of his friends show up soon.

First Spoonie!

This morning we started to receive reports that a roseate spoonbill had been spotted at the marsh. This would be the first sighting of one of our pink spoonie friends for the year so we excitedly rushed over.

By the time we got there the spoonbill had (of course) flown off and gone back deep into the swamp where it could not be seen.

We hung around for a while hoping he would fly back out and sure enough he did. The spoonbill flew out high across the marsh, then circled around flying across the trees before landing along the far edge where he stayed for only a moment before heading back over to the swamp again for the day.

He might come back out later this evening and hopefully go check out the salt marsh for low tide. But in any case it was nice to see one of these fun and interesting birds again. It’s been a long 9 months since our last pink visitors were here and we certainly hope lots of this guy’s friends show up soon!

“So What’s On Your Mind?”

An egret remains alert as an alligator comes floating over in the salt marsh during an evening feeding session.

But as usual, the gator has no interest in the birds, his thoughts are on his all time favorite treat… fresh blue crab.

But, it never hurts for the birds to keep their eyes open anyway, getting too complacent could someday be a huge mistake.

Muddy Ibis

Even though this bird is technically a white ibis, we don’t call them ‘muddy’ ibis for no reason.

These wading birds often feed by sticking their long curved bill down into the marsh mud in search of little crabs and eels.

They have almost perpetually muddy faces and feet and this guy seen flying across the salt marsh yesterday is no exception.

Just Layin’ Around

Yesterday afternoon this alligator took a slow stroll across the causeway and then decided he needed to rest a bit before continuing on, so he laid down right in the middle of the sidewalk.

He relaxed there for a few minutes before climbing down the rocky bank and into the water of the salt marsh.

The gator went under the water for several minutes then surfaced, gave me one look, then headed out across the marsh where I expect he planned to spend the night.