A beautiful day…

It may not have been exactly the day you might have pictured when I describe it as a beautiful day. It’s a little early to be dreading the hot weather already this year, but that was my first thought when we decided to head to the rookery at about 3 PM yesterday. Scorching sun was on my mind, with my recent and seemingly unending visits to the dermatologist lately I slathered on sunscreen and donned a hat and off we went. Much to my surprise the sky was hazy enough that the sun wasn’t an issue. And another surprise came when I looked at my pictures. I wish you could see them as I see them in my computer because I think the foliage looks amazing. The birds are nice too of course, but that foliage looks so good. It wasn’t any talent on my part, or my nice but middle of the road camera and lens, it was the light. And you can’t buy that!

You see the ‘kids’ carrying on in the feature photo. This is the nest that we saw last time. Mom looks exasperated.

Then mom decided she’d had enough for a while. Can’t say that I blame her.

This Woodstork pranced around and flapped his wings and he finally got his lady love to notice him, and he bowed down before her.

And then his moment was spoiled by an interloper grabbing the attention.

This is my favorite picture of the day. Yes I love the snowy egret, but the foliage really got me. Have you ever heard the sound snowys make? If you haven’t you ought to google it. They may look elegant, but it took me a long time to decide that it really was the snowy making that silly noise.

I thought the tricolor heron had just taken a drink, but it seems he got a nibble too.

If a dragonfly chooses to pose then I’ll always choose to take his picture.

We only found one other nest with two younger great white egret chicks.

This nest was further into the foliage and even the photoshop tricks weren’t going to be able to let me get the branches out of the way without ruining the picture.

This little guy is trying to be not so little.

On the drive home we were lucky enough to be stopped for a traffic light with a family of sandhill cranes moseying along the side of the road.

Even if there was a place to pull over I wouldn’t stop for pictures of them on this road. I’d be afraid I’d disturb them and cause them to head into the street. But I wasn’t going to miss my chance to shoot out the car window.

When we were getting out of the car and I heard the decibel level of the birds out there I was sure we’d finally see the numbers of nests that we’ve seen in the past. And I think they are there this year too, but deeper in the foliage or on the other side of the ‘island’. I’ve heard that the later toward sunset the better the rookery gets, but we were ready to head for home, and dinner.