Oh That Jekyll Island

Cindy invited me to go to Jekyll Island last Sunday.  We planned to do several activities: take pictures of the sunrise and moonset - which happened very close together, count birds with a birding group, pig out on seafood for supper, and then go to back to the boneyard (dead trees on the beach) and paint with colored light on the skeletons of trees as we took their pictures.

We managed to leave Cindy's house at 5:00 A.M., and got the sunset and moonset duly recorded.  Then we had a great  morning looking at a lot of shorebirds, while birding with people knowledgeable about the area, but we also got black and white warblers and hermit thrushes and lots of other little birds.

Cindy setting up to photograph the sunrise in the boneyard

Then there was this one

And that one

And another

And many more - but you get the picture

And we turned around, to got the setting moon

As it slipped through the branches of living trees

We saw these two in a little pond between the beach and the road - great comparison of a Great Egret and a snowy

Counting got way beyond me here - but the guy with the scope worked it out

I enjoyed a far-off osprey capturing a fish

Cindy and I found about 50 of a mix of yellow and black-crowned night herons

In the same pond were three pair of pie-billed grebes

 Then Cindy and I ate lunch and resumed birding. First we went to an area called the amphitheater.  There we found lots of night herons, vultures, and pie-billed grebes. Then we tried to find the summer tanager female and the painted bunting female reported to be in the camping area.  We didn't find them but enjoyed sitting and watching lots of cardinals and chickadees come to the feeders. Then we had a wonderful supper - I had the low country boil in an all-you-can eat version and Cindy had a garlicky shrimp dish.  Both were excellent.  But the day was cooler than expected and the evening chilled down fast.  And we had higher expectations of our energy levels than we actually had.  So we didn't make it to the planned light painting activity.

The shrimp boat headed into the setting sun to go catch shrimp while we headed off to eat shrimp

We were satiated but I'm not done with this island.