Saturday, November 19, 2016

Ditch 13 Hot Spots Tour

We had a nice tour this morning. Didn't have a huge species list, but we did have some posers. Here's what we saw today:

 We started off the day with a Loggerhead Shrike in the Stick Marsh parking lot. Unfortunately, we immediately realized that they were allowing hunting today (we didn't think they started till Thanksgiving day) so we had to drop back and punt.
 There was a Kestrel on the wire. Kind of odd, I'm just not seeing these in the numbers I usually do this time of year.
A late butterfly.
A flock of Glossy Ibises
A Phoebe who posed nicely for us. David got a great phone skope picture of him.
A Palm Warbler.
A Mockingbird, looking jaunty.
A group of vultures. What made me laugh is that they didn't look so much like they flew in here, they kind of just looked like they were tossed up there by the same type of person who just throws tinsel on the christmas tree.
Part of a larger flock of Great Egrets. We had few.  But then again, too few to mention.
A Little Blue Heron.

Because of the hunting, we really couldn't walk out into the Stick Marsh or Goodwin WMA, so we decided to head over to the buffer preserve to show off our Florida Scrub Jays.
Unfortunately, they had just done a prescribed fire, so the Scrub Jays had scattered. But then, right as we were about to head out, David heard some and this little guy came down to pose for us.
At our next stop, we had a bunch of posers! Here is a Great Egret.
And a Glossy Ibis.
This was my favorite poser of the day, an insanely cute immature Wood Stork.
He even looked right at the camera for me. What a nice bird!
The St. Sebastian River Preserver State Park (FKA "the buffer preserve" is one of my favorite places in Florida, and I am so lucky to live so close to it. Even when the birds aren't plentiful, it's still an amazingly pretty place to hang out.
No Manatees today, but there was a Peninsula Cooter where the Manatees will be in a few days when the temperature drops.
Clearly the air traffic controllers were not doing their job today. We saw these 2 Osprey fly into each other.
And we ended the day with another poser, a Little Blue Heron.

Always fun to be out there in the wild. Please come out and join us on a future trip. Click here to see our upcoming events.