How Many Birds Are In This Photo?

Taken on a brisk Tuesday evening in Florida. How many birds do you see in this photo?

Viera Wetlands

Here's a great egret head.

Well, I'm in Atlanta right now and the drought is still on--the grass is very brown and there are water conservation notices in the hotel rooms. However, as I type this, there is one heck of storm raging outside, so maybe this is a sign for the better? So, time to finish up the Florida entries:

So, Viera Wetlands (again, just a fancy name for a wastewater treatment area--yeah, I mean sewage) wasn't just about the cool bittern loaf. No, there were other birds there, they were just all over shadowed by the cool brown heron like bird. What else could be so cool?

Brown ducks! This is an exciting duck since it can be found in most places around the US. It's a relative of black ducks and mallards and that plumage in the above photos is about as flamboyant as it gets for the mottled duck. I can hear Non Birding Bill smirking all the way in Minnesota.

The wetlands were chock full of herons and egrets. Above is a flock of cattle egrets threatening to block the road as we were driving through.

Here is a pair of sandhill cranes near the road. Again, I would like to point out how birds in Florida are mellower than birds up north. There's no way sandhills would stick near the road if a vehicle slowed down near them. How close were they? For one thing, I didn't digiscope this photo. Here's another comparison:

That's my buddy Clay Taylor in the driver's seat watching the cranes--these birds just don't care about humans. Maybe it's the vacation atmosphere in Florida? Everybody, even the wildife is chillin' out.

Here's another anhinga, drying out its wings in the sun while surrounded by blue-winged teal. It kind of threw me to see it with blue-winged teal, a species we have nesting in Minnesota.
Here is an adult anhinga (note the white on the wings). The anhinga is another kind of celebrity bird for me. I remember staring at their illustrations in my field guides when I was a kid, in all the books, there was at least one showing it with its wings out. It's fun to see them when I am in Texas or Florida.

Speaking of birds throwing me, here's a savannah sparrow. I wondered if I was driving Clay crazy by second guessing so many birds. I kept asking things like, "Is that really a savannah sparrow I'm seeing?" I'm so used to seeing and hearing them in open areas around the Minnesota, I wasn't expecting to find them lurking in the grasses of some wetlands in Florida.

The birds weren't all brown at the wetlands. Check out this striking fellow--kind of like a coot in drag. It's a common moorhen. These birds are very grunty, belchy and farty sounding. They make a variety of noises, but it's the grunty sounds that stick in your mind.

The moorhens were mixed in with the coots. Many of the coots formed a tight raft and fed in the water. With the black bodies and heads, accented with the white bills, it was kind of hypnotic. Here's a video:

Here's another Dr. Seuss looking bird. This is the glossy ibis. Viera was just fun, everywhere you scanned you find something cool, if not on the water, then in the grasses and shoreline. There's something for everyone. And you might be surprised what you find as you're scanning:

Oh hey, what's that on the shore? Why, it's an alligator. And this wasn't the only one, they were ALL over.

Now, these birds must like life on the edge. Here are two sizable alligators and near them on the shore is a glossy ibis and a few moorhens feeding away. Are these birds just not the brightest bulbs on the tree or does their diet make them taste so nasty that an alligator just doesn't want to bother.

You could get fairly close to the alligators. Above is a member of our group named Andy getting a photo with his point and shoot. I noted the alligator was longer than I am and decided to digiscope it from where I stood behind Andy (if the gator decided to come our way, it would get Andy first).

Not a bad photo and much like the bittern photo, I could only get a head shot of the gator to fit in my field of view. Perhaps, that means I'm too close to it.

We did see some non lethal animals like this red-bellied turtle and a river otter that came running out of the water and was entirely too fast for me to digiscope.

Here's a rabbit--this poor thing was frozen and hunkered to the ground, there was a young red-shouldered hawk hunting nearby and the rabbit was using its camo ability to evade becoming a mean for the hawk. One of the guys on our trip was a Florida naturalist and he said that this was a marsh rabbit. They can swim, although, I wouldn't advise it with all the gators in the water.

Hot Gratuitous American Bittern Action

Well, I thought getting some great head shots of the wood stork was going to be the high point of my trip, but hands down, it was the American bittern action, I captured at Viera Wetlands yesterday. Now, the American bittern is a bird I can see in my home state of Minnesota, but not easily and certainly not in good photography light. One thing I am fascinated with birds is how birds respond to human activity in different states. In Florida, the birds are totally mellow: osprey right on the street lamps like red-tailed hawks. Herons and egrets will let you get within 10 feet of them. We have some of these same species in Minnesota, but they are way more cagey--it's just an interesting regional difference.

Bitterns are birds that skulk around in reeds, using their stripey plumage to hide in the reeds--it's hard to find them, you generally hear them more than you see them and when you do see them, it's usually when they are slinking back into the reeds and out of your sight. When I got the above photo of a bittern disappearing into some vegetation with the sun behind it, I considered myself very lucky.

Then we got to this spot and a fellow birder mentioned to our group that there was an American bittern in here that is a real ham. I'm a ham, I would even say chickadees and nuthatches are hams. But bitterns as hams? They are more of the Howard Hughes type. But, the light was perfect, I had a flash card to fill and couldn't resist a chance to digiscope a bittern. We couldn't see it and buddy Clay Taylor said that we were probably going to have to walk around and just work it. Clay and I assumed our positions with our scopes and our cameras and waited. Less than sixty seconds later, we saw the bittern.

It skulked out of the grasses and I got this photo. I thought this was pretty darned exciting and very bloggable--and a good representation of how you usually see a bittern through a scope or binoculars. Part of the bird and obscured by vegetation. I congratulated myself in my head for a digiscope well done. But, it didn't end there.

The bird continued to search the water at the base of the vegetation for fish and seemed completely oblivious to the pack of humans on the nearby road freaking out at how close we were to an American bittern.

Look at that! An almost completely unobscured bittern face? I felt like the luckiest girl in the world!

The bittern eventually came out fairy close to the road. If you look at the above photo, you see the end of the barrel of my spotting scope and at the top center of the photo is the bittern. I was dying at this point. It was sunny, the temperature was in the upper seventies, a slight breeze was blowing and I was watching a really cool and generally hard to see bird.

The birder we met on the road was right, this bird was a ham. Here it is point its head up to camouflage as a helicopter few over (or maybe it was simply watching the helicopter).

And then it poked its head out and continued its "relentless warfare on fish." Some of the members of our group were not birders and did find the bittern cool, but I'm sure they were wondering why Clay and I just planted ourselves for the better part of an hour photographing the bittern.

The bird was so close, I had a tough time getting anything but head shots, so I moved myself further back and was able to start getting the whole body in the frame. What amazed me was look at the size of the head in relation to the body--tiny and skinny head governing a large body in back.

At a couple of point, it puffed up slightly. I wondered what that was about. I once was fortunately enough to watch a bittern give it's call and it's really interesting. They inhale air first and their bodies blow up like a big brown beach ball and the bird deflates as it gives that pumper call. Here, it puffed up once? Is it giving some kind of call that is inaudible to me? What was it about? Still, so much to learn.

Here's a final photo, check out the wet feathers on the chin--I saw this bird get at least five fish, who knows how much it was getting as it would periodically disappear into the grasses. Though the above is the last photo, below is a video of the bittern. There is a spot on the lens and yes, I am aware of the spot. I've been uploading some photos to You Tube in the last twenty-four hours to blog about this week. Some people subscribe to the videos on there and see them right away. And a few have felt the need to let me know that I have a spot on my lens. It's a big spot and fairly obvious and it amuses me to know end that the commentors feel the need to let me know, on the off chance I didn't see it. So, as you're watching this, yes, I know that there is a spot on the lens.

Oh! And I forgot to mention, you will hear fish crows calling in the back ground--sounds like a crow that swallowed a kazoo going "ha ha". Also, watch how the bittern wiggles back and forth--that's how it's focusing on what it's about to stab it at. Alas, the flash card I was using when I took the video filled up and the camera stopped filming. Immediately after the video stops, the bittern nailed a fish.

Florida Brush Fire

There's a news story about a controlled burn in Florida that got out of control and is now a brush fire that contributed to a 50 car pile up. I think we saw it yesterday when we were birding at Viera Wetlands (the nice name for South Central Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility). I think we saw the start of it yesterday:

We saw smoke puffing up as we were birding and we wondered if it was a controlled burn or wildfire. I even called NBB and had him check Google News to see if there was anything we should worry about. There wasn't anything up in the news and we noticed that the wind was blowing in the direction of the smoke, blowing it away from us. When I was taking off from the Orlando Airport yesterday evening, I could see the smoke and see it starting in a different spot and wondered what was up.

This station has some photos of the smoke mixed with fog this morning, crazy stuff.

Merritt Island NWR

Just rolled into chez Stiteler--how will I ever get all my Florida blogging in before I leave for Atlanta on Thursday? Above is one of the many palm warblers that were flitting around the hotel and just about everywhere else we went in Florida.

Yesterday afternoon we headed over to Merritt Island NWR in Titusville, FL. We pulled over so folks could test out some digiscoping stuff. I was trying to get a photo of some of a shorebird called a ruddy turnstone. Alas, it was too close to get the scope on it! It was just as easy to take a photo the regular way. That's my shadow and the turnstone in the upper right hand corner.

Eventually, I got some distance between the turnstone and me. C'mon, even if you don't care for shorebirds, you have to admit, that's kind of a cool looking shorebird. Look at those bright orange legs!

As we were going down the road, we pulled over for some wood storks. If you look at the tops of the trees, you can see a couple of wood storks. Would you like to see them even closer?

Is it a beauty? What? That's not close enough of that dry, wrinkly skin? You want more?

Almost makes you think that this is what a white ibis would look like at 80 years old. These guys mostly eat fish, but will go for weird things like baby alligators and cow dung. Kind of makes sense with a face like that. You want more of the face?

Breathe in the wood stork, breathe out. Breathe in the wood stork, breathe out. Look at that insane nostril too. Cool bird.

We didn't spend huge amounts of time at Merritt, a storm was rolling in. I was hoping for some roseate spoonbill action in the sun, but didn't see any.

Until the rain came and it got darker, then it was spoonbill city.

Here's a spoonbill mixed in with a bunch of tricolored herons. As I was loading this onto the blog, Non Birding Bill walked behind me and asked, "Is that a roseate spoonbill I see?" I asked how he knew what a spoonbill was and he answered, "Because it's the one bird that actually looks like its name. It's rosy and it's bill looks like a spoon. That must have been the one day Audubon wasn't drunk when he was naming birds."

It's good to be home. Brace yourself for some pretty hot bittern action coming in the next 24 hours.

Dixie Crossroads Seafood Restaurant

I just thought this was a cool photo of a boat-tailed grackle--almost looks like he has mutton chops.

Tonight we had dinner at the Dixie Crossroads Seafood Restaurant, which is a must if you are birding around Titusville, FL or are going to the Space Coast Birding Festival (they were actually having a meeting prepping volunteers for it while we were there) I highly recommend the broiled rock shrimp. Outside there is a small pond full of fish--many huge, some minnows.

In the dark, along the rocks, you could see a green heron fishing for the minnows. For twenty five cents, you could purchase fish food and many of us tried to aim it in the green heron's direction to get the fish over its way, but it seemed to have its own system and ignored our helpful tosses of fish pellets.

Another Sneaky Meeting Entry

Here is a young and vocal red-shouldered hawk out in the parking lot today.

Sneaking an Entry During the Meeting

I wonder if anyone caught on that I'm blogging yet?

From the earlier entry, this was the scene not far from our hotel. The double-crested cormorant on the right (just sticking its head above water was stirrin' up some fish and the herons, egrets and ibises followed the cormorant to grab the freaked out fish.

We're here to learn more about optics and talk some digiscoping and when I went out yesterday, Ann came along to try this digiscoping thing. The crazy thing about Florida birds is that the birds just do not care about people and you can get fairly close, which was good for Ann above, she doesn't have an adapter for her camera and she was hand holding her camera up to my scope.

In Minnesota, you can't get that close to a cormorant, unless they are fightless in the nest. I was just fascinated by the detail in the cormorant's feathers.
Their eyes were such a beautiful emerald green, I don't think you can see it so well in this photo, maybe if you click on it, you can see it then.

The birds were diggin' this yellow floaty thing (I think it was damming the water). Up above we have a snowy egret, tricolored heron and white ibises. It must have been kind of a corral for fish, the birds would jump into there and gorge themselves...

and then back up to loaf on the yellow floaty thing.

And it was very much monkey see, monkey do. Once one bird would start preening, the rest would follow suit. It was a kick watching the Dr Suess-like ibis clean is feathers (that's the snowy egret behind it--the bird's yellow toes).

Speaking of toes, check out the freaky toes on this great egret (note how they are all black compared to the snowy egret).

This little group of birds was so great, you could really see the size difference. Look how tiny the ibis is compared to the great egret.

The tricolored heron was a treat, we just don't get too many of these (any) where I live.

It's even pretties on the side.

And I leave you with an ibis, while I return my attention to the meeting.

Cool Bird Under a Benningan's Sign

It is very much like spring here to me. It's green, (whoa, check out all the palm trees) there are warblers chipping in the trees, and it's a mild temperature. Today, I was very comfortable walking around the hotel with light pants and a jacket, not the hot temps I was expecting, but hey, it's not freezing. Across from the hotel is a Bennigan's Restaurant. I noticed a lump that looked birdish, so I set the scope on it.

It was an anhinga loafing under the sign. Sweet. I was also excited that the first bird I saw in Florida was not a house sparrow, staring or pigeon (I have yet to notice one). As the plane was coming in for landing, we passed over a turkey vulture. As we were taxiing to the gate, I saw more turkey vultures thermalizing overhead--what kind of sign is that to see over an airfield? A bunch of turkey vultures? From my hotel window, I watched a bald eagle perched on a dead tree, I would have tried to get a photo, but the window was too dirty.