So Florida has Ospreys. Lots of Ospreys. And there's this beachside park about a mile from Nikki and Mom's house that has Osprey nests. And lots of Ospreys. Just so you understand. Pretty, pretty Ospreys.
This one was flying over us as we hung out on the beach.
There was a tree in the middle of the park that he/she liked to perch on. This is a zoomed in picture. Check out the talons.
This is non-zoomed (on the computer, I mean). I love his pose here.
Surprisingly, the bird of the weekend was not the Ospreys, but the baby Great-Horned Owl (!). Nikki's neighbor was outside fixing her lawnmower (without being asked) and we were talking to him about birding and he oh-so-casually mentioned the Owls down at the beach. I had a mental heart attack and then Mom and I went back (speedily) to try and find them. We looked all over for about 30 minutes, and right after I spoke the words "I'm so disappointed we're not going to see them", or something to that effect, I turned around to go back to the car and saw the baby silhouetted in the sky. I'm pretty sure I left marks on Mom's arm. So this little guy is called a "brancher", which means he's probably six to eight weeks old. When they're first born, they stay in the nest, then they become branchers and scoot out onto the branches of the tree they were born in. They can't fly yet, but you can see that he's getting his flying feathers on the edges of his wing. When we went back the next day, I actually flushed the mom and I had no idea they were that large. She was massive. I felt bad for flushing her in the middle of the morning, but I was a good 30 or 40 yards away when I flushed her. I didn't know she would fly away so easily. Also, Great-Horned Owls aren't strictly nocturnal so it may not be quite so disruptive for them as for a purely nocturnal owl to be flushed during the day.
My family is very nice about humoring my birding ways, so we went on a trip to a little park about half-way between Nikki and Michael's houses. It was lovely. I saw a Carolina Wren, Prothonotary Warbler (actually Nikki and Michael found them), and this guy. He's an alligator snapping turtle. Michael kept luring him to the top of the water (I won't say how). He was cool.
I saw this pair of ducks at the same park. The white one is a mallard duck (believe it or not), and the greenish blackish one is a Muscovy Duck. They're both probably ducks that were kept captive and escaped.
This is an Eastern Towhee, Florida's version of a Robin. They call the ground robins.
And here is a Carolina Chickadee. You can tell only because of his range and his song. His chick-a-dee-dee-dee is much faster than the Black-capped. Also, the two chickadees don't overlap in range much, so if you see on in Florida, it's a Carolina, and if you see one in Chicago, it's a Black-Capped.
And, finally...aren't they cute?
Final list for the trip (not necessarily w/ pics)Eastern Towhee
Great-crested Flycatcher
Tufted Titmouse
Broad-Winged Hawk
Osprey
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Red-Winged Blackbird
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Red-Headed Woodpecker
Indigo Bunting
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Brown Thrasher
Red-eyed Vireo (maybe)
Carolina Wren
Northern Mockingbird
Prothonotary Warbler
Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher
Great Egret
Great Blue Heron
Great-Horned Owl
Double-Crested Cormorant
Laughing Gull
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