A trip to Tarpon Springs - Skywatch Friday

There's only one place to go for good Greek food in the Tampa Bay area, Tarpon Springs. It's almost an hour north of the Tampa airport but it's worth the drive. The little Greek town sits on the water and has a long sponge diving history. The main street has restaurants, tourist shops and boat tours. Whenever family or friends come to town we head there for a meal. My sister was in town recently and we went up for an afternoon of lunch and walking around. After eating the best Greek salads ever, we stopped in Hellas Bakery. We got a box full of Greek pastries to take home to eat over the weekend. It's not a place to count calories. I know, you're thinking "what's this got to do with wildlife?" I did manage to find a few birds there to take pictures of, both domestic and wild. But it's hard to think about birds when I've got a box of chocolate covered baklava in my hand.

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Birds at Lowry Park Zoo

Found this little sparrow on a railing.

Wild great egrets are starting to nest over the alligator exhibit at the zoo.

Permanently injured eagles live at the zoo. This is the first time I've seen them this close together.

Mates.

Love was in the air at the lorikeet exhibit. They were all busy preening each other.

Pink flamingo in the African aviary.

There's always something interesting to find at the Lowry Park Zoo. When my sister came to visit recently from South Dakota we spent an afternoon at the zoo. She was excited to be outside in the warm weather. It felt like spring. I was anxious to see if any of the blue herons were nesting over the alligator exhibit. There was no sign of them there but it's still a month or two early for them. There are a handful of great egrets nesting high up in the trees already. Last year blue herons filled the small palm trees along the exhibit with nests and by May there were baby blues everywhere. I'll check back in another month.

Atlanta birds in the cold - My World Tuesday

Woodpecker and friend sharing the feeder.

American robins were everywhere.

Not sure what the birds are with the stripe on their wings. I don't think they are red winged blackbirds. I didn't see any red. There were some grackles mixed in.

Sparrow was waiting to get to the feeder.

Female cardinal at the feeder.

People say there are robins in Florida in the winter but I have never seen one here. I've only seen them in Atlanta. I forget about them until I visit the in-laws. On my Christmas eve walk around my in-law's neighborhood I found a handful of birds in the cold. One house had a bird feeder that had quite a few visitors. I was glad I had brought my 300mm lens with me. I almost didn't thinking it would be too cold to be outside (for me and the birds) but both myself and birds were out a good bit.

Go and check out more MyWorld images at the MyWorld Site!  http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/

Also,check out more birds at World Bird Wednesday below.

Wild birds at the zoo

Ibis flying into the fish pond.

Ibis flying into the fish pond.


Snowy egret eating lunch.

Stork has a big fish.

Sparrow taking a bath in the sand.

Saturday it looked like it was going to rain so I headed to the zoo. You can always find wild birds at the zoo looking for an easy bite. The fish pond at the cheetah exhibit had a large group of birds eating the fish. There were storks, egrets, ibis and a great blue heron. The cheetahs didn't seem to mind. They slept through lunch. I got lucky with the weather, the rain did not come until later in the day.