Gatorland, Orlando

This week we took a trip over to Gatorland, Orlando to check out the rookery.  There are approximately 100 nesting pair of Great Egrets as well as Snowy Egrets, Blue Heron and many others.  We found pairs in various stages of romance and nesting.  Many males are still working to attrack a mate while others have mated and are nesting on eggs.  Of course this is Gatorland so had to have at least one gator picture.  I called this one "gator surfing". 

 Great Egret coming in for a landing.  (Note: click on any image to enlarge)

 Resting after putting on a show to attract a mate.

 Snowy Egret strutting his stuff.

 After leaving Gatorland we drove into Orlando where we had heard about an Eagle's nest in Greenwood Cemetery.  We quickly found it in the top of a tall pine.  One adult left as we arrived.  After about 15 min. one of the two eaglets popped up giving the below picture.  I believe they are about 4 to 5 weeks old.  One adult circled high overhead but we needed to leave before it returned to the nest.

I'll be posting additional pictures at www.pbase.com/ddouglas

Back to the Circle B Bar Reserve

I missed several weeks of going to the Circle B while my camera was at Canon Repair.  I got it back last week so off to see what had changed.  I had read that the Eagles on the sand ridge had a new arrival, now two weeks old so that was my first destination.  The below picture was digiscoped using my Kowa 883 spotting scope and my Canon digital SLR.  With the scope set to 20X and the 1.6 crop factor of the camera this equates to approximately a 1500 mm lens.  You can't get very close to this nest so the quality of the picture is not great but you can clearly see the young eaglet and one of the parents to the left.

 These two sand hill cranes heard a sudden noise and turned in unison to look.

 Red Bellied Woodpecker along Marsh Rabbit Run

 Several River Otters were playing along Alligator Alley