St. Petersburg Pier

Great blue heron sitting on the sea wall.

Flowers around the pier.

Scruffy looking grackle with a green grasshopper.

Great blue with his army of white ibis.

Sailing lessons in the bay.

It's always fun to watch the kids taking sailing lessons in the bay near the pier. They follow the leader in the small boat and practice zig zagging around the area. The wind was blowing pretty hard this morning. But, it was warm air so it still felt hot. My highlight of the morning was watching the grackle trying to eat the grasshopper. I didn't see him catch it. I walked up on him with it in his mouth. It took him a while to get it in his beak correctly to swallow it down. Or, maybe he was just trying to decide whether he really wanted to eat that wiggly bug. Maybe I should have offered him some ketchup to help it go down. The best thing about the pier is all of the pelicans that hang around. More on those later.

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Chesnut Park

Cool red and black spider. I've never seen one like this before.

Tufted titmouse posing for me in the tree. These little birds are so cute.

Female red winged black bird doing the splits in the reeds.

Female grackle trying to eat a snail.

Yellow warbler in a palm tree.

The bird whisperer feeding a titmouse.

On a hot sweaty morning a couple of weekends ago, I ran into Bob. He was sitting on the boardwalk that runs along the lake watching the birds. I crept up near him and watched him feed some female red winged blackbirds. We started talking and after sitting there for a while a titmouse came up and ate some seed out of his hand. It was pretty amazing watching this tiny little bird sitting on his hand. We sat there for a while and then moved on to another part of the park where I found the above yellow warbler. There wasn't too much else in the park that morning. It was just too hot. I'm going to head back there in the next couple of weeks since I've heard the migrate birds are starting to come through.



After work walk at Kapok Park

Great blue heron hiding in the bushes. I think I woke him up from his nap.

Tiniest frog I've ever seen. This is blown up. I almost stepped on him.

Mallards walking around keeping an eye on me.

Blue jay with a nut.

Male grackle shining in the sun.

Another hot walk around Kapok Park after work. Kapok is a small park right in the middle of some neighborhoods off a busy road. It used to be a trailer park and was turned into a water management project. It's named after the tall kapok tree that is an emergent tree in the rainforest that grows tallest over all the other trees. I couldn't find any information on how Clearwater Florida got some of these tree. In the winter there's a lot of unusual wildlife there but in the summer it slows down a bit. There weren't too many people there as well. Things were pretty quiet while I was there.

Birds of Davis Islands

Female grackle sitting on an abandoned boat.

The usual willets are always hanging out around the jetty.

The oystercatchers were pretty skittish. They would not let me get too close.

Spotted sandpiper.

A tern sitting on some type of buoy or anchor.

Nothing unusual was found on my trip to the Davis Islands yacht basin. Just the boring ole oystercatchers, willets and terns. It's still too hot to see anything good but soon the migrating birds will be coming through in bigger numbers and before you know it the eagles will back. I'm counting down the days for when it's no longer hot and the fun winter birds are here. It's only about 100 more days, give or take 10.

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Crescent Lake Park

Starling shining in the sun.

Female grackle with a juvenile.

Fat geese getting fed.

Juvenile white ibis downing a mouthful.

Foodfest at the ibis party.

Blue jay looking sad on the bench.

When it gets really I hot I tend to head for spots along the water to get the sea breeze. Before heading to the St. Petersburg Pier, I stopped at a nearby park. Crescent Lake Park is a small park near downtown St. Petersburg.  My last trip there was last spring when the baby geese were growing up. It looks like there weren't any baby geese this spring. People are always feeding them so they're pretty aggressive. I try and stay away from them. While I was walking around the lake, a lady and her daughter had a big loaf of bread and were feeding all of the animals at the park. The ibis were practically attacking each other for a slice of bread. Of course, they attacked the little girl as she was throwing out slices and finally she just threw the whole bag at them. This is why there are signs saying "Do not feed the wildlife." Oh well.

Chesnut Park

Alligator hiding in the reeds close to the edge of the lake.

I was standing on a dock at the lake and saw this alligator go by a fishing boat. The boat had been sitting out in the middle of the lake for a while. The guys were probably half asleep (I would have been). The alligator kept on going by the boat. There's always people skiing in this lake. Makes you wonder whether they are brave or just stupid.

I found about 8 different bunnies around the playground area. They look different from the usual wild brown bunnies I see at parks. These look like someone had them as pets and let them go in the park.

Grackle looking around.

Carolina wren sitting on the boardwalk.

Cute squirrel. Is it me or does there seem to be a huge population explosion of squirrels lately in the Tampa bay area?  There seems to be tons of them everywhere. Are the hawks not keeping up? Sometimes in my backyard I can count 3 or 4 wandering around. We don't have feeders in our yard (no cats or dogs either which might explain why they hang out in our yard).

It was a quiet morning at Chesnut Park in north Pinellas county a couple of weekends ago. It was one of the first really hot humid weekends. Not much but me and mosquitoes (and the usual alligators). I managed to find a few birds but nothing exciting. This was my first trip there that I didn't see any woodpeckers. I usually see pileated woodpeckers somewhere along the Peggy Park trail. I didn't even hear them. On top of tons of squirrels everywhere, there were also a lot of rabbits. I saw several wild brown rabbits but also saw a big group of black ones and cream ones. Someone must have dropped them off after Easter. They let me get pretty close so they are used to people. If they get to close to the water's edge, they're going to end up being alligator food. Oh well, circle of life, etc.

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Lots of birds at Kapok Park

Juvenile blue heron walking around in the dead reeds.

Anhinga's got lunch.

Pied grebe is shaking off the water.

Warbler posing on a branch.

Grackles and cowbirds (below) are always on the boardwalk.

There was a pretty decent variety of birds at Kapok Park in Clearwater for a Sunday afternoon. I only had a few hours and didn't want to go to far away so I stopped off at the park to walk around. There wasn't anything unusual at the park. The highlight of the visit was the above anhinga getting a fish. 

Celery Field variety of birds - Skywatch Friday

I parked along side of the road at the celery fields in Sarasota and the above was circling overhead.  Having a "turkey" vulture circle around you is almost like celebrating Thanksgiving. I don't think turkey vultures get the credit they deserve for being "cool" birds. They look great when they are flying high up in the sky. They look creepy when there's a group of them hanging out on the side of the road.  I did have a good visit to the celery fields the week of Thanksgiving and I'm going to try and get back before Christmas.

For more skyscape photography from around the world, visit http://skyley.blogspot.com/.

This red shouldered hawk couple sat on the light fixture the entire time I was there.

Any id on this would be great. At first I thought it was a palm warbler which are common here but there's no hint of yellow.  Could it be a hermit thrush? That's the closest I could find on Whatbird.com.

Flock of anhingas flying by.

Grackle can't read.

The above is a yellowlegs. Not sure if it's a greater or lesser. They look alike.

I finally see a kildeer and didn't even know it. The sun was going down and I wanted to get a picture of the shorebirds sleeping. I didn't see the kildeer in the upper left corner until later when I uploaded the pictures. The picture is extremely cropped. I can't believe that little bird snuck into my picture and didn't let me know he was there. There was a small flock of shorebirds together and he must have been hiding in them.

Kapok Park on a cold day

Grackle eating a slice of bread that someone had dropped in the lake for the turtles. These birds almost look black but when you see them in the sunlight you can see their different shades of blue and gray.

Glossy ibis that has been hanging around the park for a while now. This was the first time I've seen it close to the boardwalk.

 

I was walking on the boardwalk when the above anhinga popped out of the water. She swam back and forth in front of me and seemed to be showing me her prize. She swam under the boardwalk to swallow it so I was not able to get a shot of that. I'm assuming she did. She swam back out with fish parts stuck on her beak.

Wet pied grebe had just popped out of the water.

 

I think the duck on the left was saying "Stop splashing me while she's trying to take a picture you ole coot."

By cold I mean a high of 72 degrees. A couple of weeks ago we had a cold blast in central Florida and I slept in that morning and headed out to the park later that afternoon. Someone had just dropped an entire loaf of bread in the lake and grackles were diving down for them. It turned out to be a nice day and I didn't even need my jacket.