North Shore Beach: 12-12-17

American White Pelicans

These winter visitors are almost twice the size of our year-round Brown Pelicans.

They can weigh as much as 30 lbs and have a 9’ wingspan. 

Their bills can hold 3 gallons of water.

Great Blue Heron

North America’s largest heron

Least Sandpipers

The world’s smallest sandpiper

Short-billed Dowitchers

Until 1950, the Short-billed Dowitcher and Long-billed Dowitcher were considered to be one species.

Osprey

Semipalmated Plovers are the most common plover seen on migration in most areas.

Deck Shots

Blue Jay

Interestingly, the Blue Jay’s coloration is not derived by blue pigments, but is the result of light refraction due to the internal structure of the feathers.

If a Blue Jay’s feather is crushed, the blue color disappears as the structure is destroyed.

Blue Jays as well as many other birds will eat paint on the side of homes to get additional calcium, in the form of calcium carbonate, which is used in many paint formulas as a pigment extender.

Birds will often seek out supplemental calcium during the breeding season to help with eggshell formation and to feed their chicks while their bones are developing.

Pied-billed Grebes often congregate off our mangroves

In their non-breeding, winter plumage the bill is not pied

This shot (not from our deck) shows an adult in breeding plumage (with its pied bill) as it gets dangerously close to a large Bull Snake.

Great Egret and White Ibises foraging next door.

Female Belted Kingfisher, a winter visitor.

12-11-17

Butterfly Garden, Univ of FL: Gainesville 10-27-17

Blue Morpho

Egmont Key NWR: 11-11-17

Loggerhead Shrike

  

These birds are most well known for their innovative use of barbed-wire and chain-link fences to impale their prey to cache for later.  With this technique it’s easy to understand where they get their nick-name of “Butcherbird"

Snowy Egrets

Interestingly, there is evidence that a pair of Snowy Egrets cannot recognize each other except at the nest.  Even there, a bird arriving to relieve its mate must perform an elaborate greeting ceremony in order to avoid being attacked as an intruder.

Bottlenose Dolphins leading ships along Egmont Channel into and out of Tampa Bay