Skip and I got up early this morning to go over to the Birding Center to experience low tide. The local paper publishes tide charts which we usually don't interpret properly but this time we got it right. It surely must be because of the full moon because the rest of the month the tide won't be this low.
Just out the door, this rather drab roseate spoonbill was wandering around on its own. I suspect it is a juvenile due to its lack of colour.
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| Spotted sandpiper |
Looking straight out from the boardwalk, this area is usually full of water.
Black skimmers had congretated on the flats. Hundreds of them.
The water was so shallow here, the snowy egret's bright yellow feet are easily seen.
Skimmers are taking off.
Royal terns were facing into the wind. Beyond them, a tricoloured heron had just nabbed a fish.
The Laguna Madre is very shallow. This fisher is a couple of hundred feet out from the low tide mark. Even at high tide, people fish with waders or from flat bottomed boats that only draft a few inches.
Beyond the black skimmers are hundreds of redheads.
Most of them are snoozing in the morning sun.
The reddish egret looks somewhat bedraggled.
They have a very distinctive way of catching food - an ungainly dance. We often see a white morph of this species that has the same colour bill.
Tricoloured herons do not mind foraging with black-necked stilts.
Yellow-crowned night herons.
Its eyes are closed. ZZZzzzz.
I don't remember ever seeing as many pintail ducks as we've seen this year. The one in the front is a mottled duck.
Tricoloured heron posing on the boardwalk rail.
The brown pelican found quite a few fish in what little water was off the deck at the Birding Center.
The green heron was in the area occupied by the big alligators. It appeared to be quite alert.
The northern waterthrush was running around in the shade of the low mangroves. This area is usually under water. My camera doesn't take great shade photos from a brightly sunlit area.
The green heron was in the same area when we walked back to the Birding Center.
In the butterfly garden, a male queen butterfly was nectaring on one of the flowers.
Skip and I need to climb stairs whenever we can while we're away as the condo is on the ground floor. We went up two storeys at the Birding Center to look out to the Laguna. The dry area on the left centre is flooded when it's not low tide.
Looking straight down from this vantage point we see several 'teenage' gators. There are about 50 gators in a big enclosed area here. Since it became an alligator rescue area, the Birding Center revenue has more than doubled. People love bringing their children here to see the alligators. The biggest one is 12.5 feet long and is called 'Big Padre'.
Up on a wire, a female belted kingfisher was perched. I like how her tummy feathers covered her feet on the wire. The male doesn't have the rust markings on the sides. Belted kingfishers also have the spiky crest.
We then went for take-out coffee and then to Sheepshead to see what we could see. A couple of volunteers were watering plants and ripping out invasive plants - too much activity for any birds to hand out. We returned to the condo for lunch and naps.
I did some more stitching on the Teresa Kogut project which I hope to finish tomorrow. We are expecting an Amazon shipment so will be making a trip to the post office so I can mail it to her when we pick up our parcels on Tuesday.
She got back another of her big samplers from a stitcher last week. It's called
Newcastle Bouquet and it's gorgeous; and SO different from her other samplers. I am really looking to her new releases for Market the first weekend of March. Vendors get first crack at orders, after a couple of weeks, all her new stuff will be available i
n her Etsy shop. Have I mentioned that two of the patterns I stitched for her are now available in her Etsy shop as well?
Bee Kind and
Two Homes.
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