Phil Lanoue Photography

Gotta Go

Last week this adult brown pelican made a quick departure from the salt marsh after a heavy round of fishing.

Wood stork wings tips generally appear black. But if the sunlight hits them just right, such as in this early evening flight across the salt marsh, their wing tip feathers can almost glow with a green iridescence.

Dragon In His Lair

Well actually it’s more like the cute alligator laying around on his bed of nice soft tamped down weeds.

I took a walk over to the swamp this afternoon but things looked fairly quiet. The usual active assortment of coots, moorhens, and grebes were hard at work but otherwise not much going on.

I took this overall view of one section of the swamp with my phone because I didn’t have a wide lens with me. Then, down just a bit further, something caught my eye and I stopped to peer through the reeds. Although he thought he was well hidden, I was able to spot our alligator friend relaxing in the mid day sun. He lifted his head up and took a look at me but was not tremendously impressed so he went back to napping.

Pleasant enough day for everyone it seemed, with not a care in the world.

King Of The Mountain

Well in this case, for a young white ibis, it’s more like king of the oyster beds. At least until the adults start showing up, then it’s time to leave and go hang out with the rest of the kids.

New Fishing Style

Yesterday, at late afternoon, we had a few adult brown pelicans come into the salt marsh and begin fishing. Except they were not using the typical brown pelican fishing style which generally involves flying around and then doing an almost vertical head first dive into the water.

There were a lot of small fish in this one area so that’s where the pelicans landed and stayed. So rather than fly and fish, they floated and paddled along the water in circles, occasionally dunking down their head to scoop up tiny fish and shrimp.

After plunging it’s huge bill into the water, the pelican would keep it’s head down while straining the water out of the bill so that only the catch would remain.

I never saw any of these guys snatch anything large, they mostly just came up with small marine creatures that sometimes I could barely see. But they definitely caught things they liked because I could see them swallowing the snack after practically every plunge.

As it began to get dark I had to leave these hard working pelicans, but it was quite an entertaining show for the time I spent watching these large birds feed.

Up And Away

A great blue heron arises from the water on a winter afternoon and then takes flight across the marsh lit by setting sunlight.

Heavy Overhead

Earlier this week I had this bald eagle do an overhead cruise just above my location.

This eagle is one half of our local mated pair that we’re hoping may have chicks this year.

That should be good news for us as we hope to be able to capture action shots of them hunting for food to feed the youngsters. Bad news for the area coot population though, who have no idea they could become the main item on the eagle buffet!

Quick Skirmish In The Salt Marsh

Earlier this week there were a couple of egrets fishing in the salt marsh during low tide. The egrets don’t seem to be in particularly social moods lately, and when I saw this one jump off, I wasn’t surprised to see him go after the other egret.

He bit the offending bird in the rump and then tried to bite it’s foot but missed as the lucky egret skipped away to safety just in time.