New Bellies to Feed

The only birding done lately has been watching the usual activity at home...well, except we did take a maiden voyage recently, with our new bike carrier and bicycles, on a park trail along the Intracoastal Waterway. I didn't take a camera (hubby would've been most unamused) as this was about exercise; a.k.a. no dwaddling. We saw an osprey on the opposite shore, surveying the expanse of water before it from the top of a bare tree. And we saw little blue herons and one great heron on the water's edge by the path, cruising for food. 

Yesterday we witnessed a female ruby-throated hummingbird hovering at one of the bell-shaped flowers in our front yard...then she perched on a thin tree branch above the flowers for a few moments. I knew I'd never get to the camera in time so didn't bother. Darn it....

However, I did get some shots "through the looking glass" of what I'm guessing are the new offspring pair of our resident male and female red-bellied woodpeckers!

First, this is Mama RB Woodpecker at the suet, which I can hardly keep in supply it's going so fast...and of course a blue jay at the nuts/seeds feeder...

...Ok, ok, without further ado...here they are! Our newbies! Will they stick around like their parents? I hope at least long enough to see what gender they are. Mom and Pop wasted no time showing them where the easy pickin's can be found.

A closer look at suet fledgling...

The tufted titmice are really scarce right now, but lately I've seen one here and there zing in to the feeder and zing out. This one looks like it could be a fledge, but I really have no clue.

Washington Oaks Gardens State Park

How's that for a mouthful of title?! Ru and I finally visited the WOGSP, off of A1A and touching on the shore of the Matanzas River, part of the Intracoastal Waterway. The park was originally part of a Spanish land grant in 1815 that was developed into a plantation, owned by a distant relative of George Washington. Purchased in 1936 by Owen and Louise Young, the couple built a winter home near the waterway under the live oak hammock, and developed the gardens. When Mr. Young died, Louise gave the land to the state. The park is part of the Great Florida Birding Trail....

This is the view of the Matanzas River / Intracoastal Waterway from the WA Oaks Gardens Park...

A great blue heron graciously allowed us to walk close-by due to the fact that a fisherman was nearby fishing off the sea wall.....the heron was all in shadow until the sun broke through the clouds suddenly, after I'd taken a zillion photos....

The gardens are graced by this huge live oak tree that is dripping with Spanish moss...

I'm surprised I didn't see more mushrooms besides this lone one....

A grey squirrel was keeping a very close eye on us as we strolled by "his" tree....

A pretty, curly frond....

Barely into the garden wandering, the tranquility was interrupted by sudden hammering...I followed the sound as far as I could w/o wading into a pond....a pileated woodpecker sending Morse code...

At the pond's edge is a charming gazebo...

And near the gazebo, this lovely statue....

I'm afraid I don't know the names of most of these flowers...

Bird of paradise, of course.....

I believe this is a double delight rose, a favorite of my mom's...there is a rose garden at WA Oaks...
And pink flowers of many kinds...

Hibiscus of course...

There were many other flowers, some not yet in bloom. We saw one other bird, unidentifiable, that may have been a Caroline wren...besides the usual No. cardinals.

Spring Shift & Jay Blanchard Park

    Here in central Florida, we're well into the spring season, and just starting to see hints of the hotter summer months not far ahead. It has been 7 months since Ru and I finished our 4 month job in Hawaii, and we are quite slow to get ourselves truly settled in. But we are making slow progress little by little. We weren't here last summer, so I am try to prep mentally for the hot humid yuckiness of June - Sept. Yea right, as if! I'll be staying indoors 99% of the time!

    My lack of motivation encompasses birding, except for enjoying the daily entertainment our backyard birds (and squirrels) provide us with.  When I try to sit outside in our screened lanai to read, I have a hard time ignoring the almost constant action!

    The smaller birds are nearly all gone..the pine warblers, the goldfinches, and the chipping sparrows. I did see a Carolina wren a couple days ago, first one after many weeks. The blue jays, our one red-bellied woodpecker pair, and the No. cardinals are here year-round....(it HAS been one year since we moved into our house!) We also have too many mourning doves...minus one as of yesterday, thanks to the "sharp-shinned hawk" that I posted about previously...having now seen it up closer, I think it's a  Cooper's hawk after all. (Sharp-shinned only winters here.) It scours our feeders regularly, unfortunately. We do have a newcomer, a brown thrasher! I had seen a few last spring in neighbors' yards but this is the first to hang out at our house...it seems to like the suet, which has become so popular it only lasts about 3 days! Yikes! Someone is snarfing under the coverage of night!

    We recently took a day trip to the Orlando area with our new friends/neighbors, starting with a visit to Jay Blanchard Park, where there is a paved biking trail that starts along a canal. While our friends biked, we strolled part of the canal and enjoyed seeing many shore birds....plus a gator...I definitely got a really good dose of birding that day! .......

Right off, a common moorhen near the canal's shore, puttering about...

There was also a mucky adult white ibis on the canal's edge....

Along with 4-5 immature white ibises.....

And ~ oh excitement! ~ a limpkin! A lifer! According to the Stokes field guide, found only in Florida....

There were some red-winged blackbirds around...that was a surprise since I haven't been seeing them anymore in our area....

We came to a spot where two swallow-tailed kites were circling around overhead...I managed an okay shot, which is a small miracle, as bad as I am at shooting moving "targets"...this was the first time I've seen them so close up. We saw some at quite a distance in S Florida last year.

We were sitting on a bench, watching a great blue heron flying low over the canal....

Peek-a-boo! The gator we'd seen several yards back, was still within sight on the opposite edge of the canal...As the heron flew over the gator, the gator lunged half-heartedly at the heron, totally missed...
Toto, weren't not in Kansas anymore...

Back near our resting spot...plenty of these little buggars in our own backyard...this one was looking for hand-outs...

As we headed back towards our car, an anhinga (immature or small/young male) came to shore right in front of us...look closely & you can see a string around its neck...

While attempting to get photos of a moseying little blue heron, we witnessed it capture and swallow a frog....whole...

Whaa fwaug-g-g?! Trying to look innocent....but what about the large lump in its throat? Oh yuck.

And the little blue heron continues hunting, like nothing happened...

*  *  *  *  *

Back on the home front, here's the Cooper's hawk with the remains of its catch, below the feeders...ok there's only a wing, did it honestly eat the whole body, bones and all?! I discovered the miscreant upon return from a leisure bicycle ride....

Our newest "family" member, the brown thrasher...not a hermit thrush. Has white wing tips, golden eyes, and a long tail. It's getting over its camera shyness...As you can see below, it manipulates its tail out of the way. Sometimes it appears to not even have a tail.  Which reminds me, the tail-less mockingbird from last year is back and hanging in the back yard quite a bit now. Let's hope Mr. Cooper leaves it alone!

"Peanutbutter and... raisins?! Where's the chocolate?!"

Catch Up but No Fries

I confess! As anyone can see by the date on my last post, it's been over 2 months that I've been MIA...Nothing drastic has happened, I've just been extremely lazy about keeping up with my Blog. I have done very little birding outside of watching the backyard birds at the feeders, or the few varieties of birds seen at the beach, but what deliberate birding I have done ~ namely visiting two different birding spots on the Great Florida Birding Trail ~ has produced very disappointing results as far as visual and photographic issues goes...

Hubby and I just visited No. Peninsula State Park a few miles south of Flagler Beach...this is where the FL scrub jay can be found supposedly. We heard and saw many birds but not well enough to ID any, except for some black vultures and a blue jay.  ARG! Discouragement reigns supreme!

Ok I really shouldn't whine, we have quite the variety of birds coming and going at the back yard feeders, and neighboring trees...

The most common birds, the chipping sparrows, arrive daily...

Yellow-rumped warblers are about town...but are rare to our feeders...

We are suddenly seeing a No. mocking bird here and there...not at the feeders, but

this fellow came in for a vigorous bathing...

The tufted titmice grab a nut and zip away...

The American goldfinches have appeared recently, still pale...

The male pine warblers are very yellow now...

The blue jay couple continues to show up daily, usually separately...

When together, they don't seem to share well or tolerate one another...

Despite there being two separate platform feeders...

The same goes for the red-bellied woodpecker pair...this is the female...

Another No. mockingbird, this one in our blooming bottlebrush tree...

(I was very excited when it started blooming!)

We're seeing a few brown-headed nuthatches now...

In S Dakota I saw white and red-breasted nuthatches,

So was excited to see this little fellow to add to my lifer list...

The male red-bellied woodpecker up in our backyard maple tree...

The squirrels have STUFFED themselves with those pink seeds from the front maple tree...

Wiping out the entire tree's seed supply, except for what is

Scattered all over the driveway and front lawn...we saw up to 5 squirrels

At a time in the front maple...the back maple already has leaves...

Will the front yard maple grow leaves?!

A handsome male No. cardinal on a feeder arm covered in morning dew...

The new feeder pole has 2 criss-crossed arms and holds 8 feeders...

I'm going broke just using 5 of the hooks...

A chance visit from a yellow-bellied sapsucker, looking for a drink...

The robins rarely visit, but when they do it's a good-sized flock,

Descending upon the bird bath and ground feeding...

They're in and out for a short period just one day...

Then gone again for weeks...

This photo includes a female brown-headed cowbird...

The females are like the robins, wham, bam, gone...

Except for very recently...we're now seeing males & females,

all over the feeders, daily.

(Queue the theme from "Jaws" ...)

The bad boy of the bunch...a sharp-shinned hawk (I don't think it's a Cooper's hawk due to the small size)...he appears to have a mockingbird perhaps...these guys scout backyard feeders for prey...we have seen him swooping thru the yard a couple times since this deadly visit...

Even tho we didn't see any birds of interest today at No. Peninsula St. Park,

On the way back home, heading along Flagler Beach, we stopped so I

Could attempt to photograph the No. gannets...still too far away for decent shots...

Only to discover that a small pod of porpoises (our guess) was cruising by...

3-4 of them were actually surfing in the waves! Cowabunga!