Pinellas birds on a Saturday morning

Ibis digging for food in Tampa Bay.


Boattail grackle eating a berry at the Safety Harbor fishing pier.

Great Blue Heron trying to sleep at Kapok Park.

Wild parrot at Kapok Park. These guys are always high up in trees.

Saturday morning brought perfect weather so I decided to hit some parks close to home. First I stopped at Kapok Park. It was a quiet morning. Not too many birds there. I saw a flock of wild parrots flying around high up in the trees. It's so hard to get decent pictures of them because they stay so high up. I looked for the owls but could not find them. Maybe they haven't come back yet. I'll keep looking. Next I stopped by the Safety Harbor fishing pier. Even though the tide was low there were not a lot of birds around. Lots of manatees still there. I was leaning on the railing of the pier taking pictures of the manatees when this grackle landed on the rail right next to me. He had a berry in his mouth and seemed to be showing off his prize. I got a few good pictures of him before he flew off. On the way home I stopped by Philippe Park and managed to get a very far away picture (see below) of the eagle pair that has come back for the winter. Last winter and spring they spent a lot of time on the first utility tower in the water. The picture was taken with my 500mm lens and extremely cropped.