A New Year Begins at Viera Wetlands

One of my California friends had to come to a class in Florida and decided to take a long weekend off on her airplane ticket and invited me to meet her.

Our first adventure, after surviving heavy traffic, was to spend a day at Viera Wetlands, a very special place for wading birds and ducks, ibis, anhinga, and other species.  This was one of the places still rattling around in my bucket list, leftover from my time working at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. So I was very excited.

I got some of the best bird pictures I've been able to get because we could get quite close to many of the animals. And many birds were establishing territory, building nests, and some were even taking care of kids.

Come along and meet some of them.

This was an aggressively singing red-winged blackbird

There were lots of white ibis about

I love the way they tip themselves into the air

I think the juvenile white ibis are more photogenic

An anhinga on the nest

The way the pair looked 

Both parents were in this nest

Some anhinga were still building nests.  Glad to see the men helping. 

I didn't see any double crested cormorant nesting but this guy looked exuberant.

I was a bit startled to see these two species together

I took pictures of limpkin all morning, thinking there juvenile glossy ibis. 

The best thing were the several great blue heron nests.  (And the worst thing was that a hurricane had taken down many of their nest trees.)

I spent a lot of time photographing female great blue herons building their nests. (You can tell females because they are the ones that build the nest. 

Then I got excited over one baby in a nest

But the best was this entire family 

Parent on right going after more food

The three siblings are each a few days apart with one almost ready to leave the nest,
while the smallest seems about a week behind 

We went back to the nest with three young to try to catch more family interactions. The babies were on there own for several minutes until a parent flew in and fed the largest babie. 

We saw plenty of alligators sunning in the warm air, or swimming. I almost fell across a six foot alligator that was walking across the road behind me as I was backing up while looking through my viewfinder.

One of the cute little alligators trying to cool off by opening his mouth

A soft shelled turtle - a rare find

 I was amazed to learn that the Caracara, AKA Mexican eagle, was a Florida resident.

Can you tell the species of his supper?

Those are the  coot feet I tell people make them look like they are wearing their father's galoshes 

 I tried to get this out for Sunday, but our motel had wi-fi too slow to load pictures. I'm spending the evening with another friend and rushing to finish this early the following day.  I've been up twenty-one hours, playing with Cindy, then driving back to pick up my car and tell her goodby, then driving to another friends's house for super and a sleepover with several hours of visiting.

Today Cindy and I were supposed to go swim with manatees, but thanks, to climate change, the water warmed up early and the few hundred manatees left to go feed. The tour company offered to refund our money so we took them up on it.  We had a magical experience the last time we went, with a baby manatee that came and nibbled on my hair several times.  But we did have a wonderful air-boat tour to look for snail kites yesterday and today enjoyed photographing birds at Ellie Schiller Homasassa Springs Wildlife State Park.

Stay tuned.