Crescent Lake Park

Green heron sitting on a metal stick that was in the lake.

A late bloomer. Mon only had the one with her.

A strange looking duck family. That white one is sticking his neck out like "Look at me!".

Wild parrot that lives in the water tower next to the lake. They hang out on the ballpark fence.

Staring at me like "What is she doing?"

Before I head over to downtown St. Peterburg to walk along the big pier on the bay, I like to stop at a small park nearby. Crescent Lake is surrounded by houses and small apartments and it's always busy with people jogging, walking and walking their dogs. The wildlife there is nothing spectacular but it does have a few neat things. A flock of geese live there all year. At first there were only a handful of them but last spring one of the couples had babies and now there's a big family of them. They are pretty aggressive because people feed them. There's a large flock of wild parrots living in the water tower at the corner of the lake and they are loud. I would hate to live across the street from that tower. Those parrots were squawking the entire time I was there. I can usually find the usual great egrets and great blue herons. On this trip I saw the green heron but he took off pretty quick. After a lap around the lake I headed to downtown St. Pete.

More big red dancing at Fort Desoto beach

More pictures of the Fort Desoto Park mascot, the reddish egret. Fort Desoto has a handful of them that live there and they like to put on a good show for photographers. I was there early one morning recently and he was doing his dance (or "I'm trying to catch fish behavior"). He's so much fun to watch.  I had him all to myself for a while and just sat on the beach watching him run around. Eventually other people started heading on to the beach and he flew off.

Pouring rain to rainbow - Skywatch Friday

The resident neighborhood osprey sitting on my neighbor's dock in the pouring rain.

He usually sits on the sailboat mast but I guess he got tired of it rocking in the rain.

Now it's just a sprinkle and the sun was starting to come out. I got to thinking. If the sun's out on this side of the house and it's still raining on the other side, I should check to see if there's a rainbow somewhere.

I opened my front door and saw this. I grabbed my camera and took this and the one below in my driveway.

For more skyscape photography from around the world, visit Skywatch Friday.

Birds and Bunnies at Chesnut Park

The usual great egret standing on the boardwalk rail.

Small alligator swimming along the boardwalk.

Another titmouse shot. The park was full of them.

This bunny thinks he's hiding from me.

Bunny with an itch.

The nice thing about Chesnut park is that if there aren't a lot of birds around to take pictures of, there's always the bunnies.There used to be at least 10 hanging around the boardwalk and now I can only find two. I heard from another photographer that was there that the park "relocated" most of the bunnies. These aren't wild bunnies but pets that someone had dropped off over the years and well, you know what they say about bunnies. First there were two and then there was 10. If they get too close to the lake they may end up alligator food. 

North Beach Sanctuary at Fort Desoto

Black bellied plover in between his summer and winter feathers.

I'm going with a piping plover juvenile. It was really tiny.  Both the semipalmated and piping have yellow legs but the piping plover had the all black beak as a juvenile.

The north beach sanctuary. A small section of the birds in the roped off area. Note the osprey sitting on the top of the bush on the left.

Really??? Either they can't read or chose to ignore the signs all around the small lagoon.

Snowy egret guarding his post.

Coming into the Tampa bay.

Fort Desoto is a huge place. With the exception of maybe July 4th, there's plenty of room for everybody.  There are small lagoons all over the park. There are two large fishing piers that you don't have to have a license to fish from. I don't know why the two guys in the above picture felt the need to stand in the one lagoon that is roped off and fish.They eventually wandered back over to the regular part of the beach. The birds usually stay pretty far deep in the middle of the sanctuary so you would need binoculars to identify a lot of the smaller birds there. Occasionally, a few birds wander outside of the area which is how I got the first two pictures. 

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East beach turnaround at Fort Desoto

I think this was a short billed dowitcher. He was digging pretty deep.

I think this is a first winter common tern. He seemed to be the lone common on the beach.

Tricolored heron darting for food.

Crabs heading down to the water.

Fiddler crabs on the beach.

I got to the east beach turnaround at Fort Desoto pretty early in the morning. Only a few fishermen were there. The tide was really low so I walked along the mangroves pretty far past the normal part of the beach. I didn't see the crabs as I walked along the mangroves. When I was walking back to my car I saw this movement in the sand. At first I thought it was a lot of leaves that had blown onto the beach. As I got closer, I realized it was crabs coming from the mangroves. I took some pictures from pretty far away thinking they would scurry back to the mangroves as I got closer to them but they didn't leave. They let me get pretty close. This was the closest I have gotten to these little fiddler crabs. One thing I didn't notice at first is that some of the crabs have the pincher on the left side and some on the right side. So, I looked it up.  Only male crabs have the enlarged claw. It can be on either side. Females have two small claws. But, males can lose their enlarged claw for a while when they molt and regrow another one. So just by looking at one with no large claw it could be either a male or female. Unless, you look real close and see the two small claws on the female. Good luck getting that close.

Butterflies, bees and a bird.

Big lesson learned when I arrived at the Florida Botanical Gardens in Largo. I get to the park and pull out my camera and immediately want to take the picture of the above Carolina wren that was close to the parking lot. I knew he wouldn't sit there long. Yes, I drove to the park with my air conditioning blasting. Yes, my lens fogged up. I had my cleaning cloth with me in my backpack and tried to wipe off the fog but it just kept fogging up. Now, while it's still so hot and humid, I drive with the windows rolled down to the park. And to top it all off this was the only bird I saw worth taking a picture of. It was so hot and fall migration had not started yet. So I settled for a few bee and butterfly pictures.