Places

Green Cay Nature Center

Resources:

All About Birds — an online field guide

Birding.Com — superb online resource for most everything to do with birding

Cornell Lab of Ornithology — where it’s at in North American birding

eBird — Online sightings database — eBird’s goal is to maximize the utility and accessibility of the vast numbers of bird observations made each year by recreational and professional bird watchers. It is amassing one of the largest and fastest growing biodiversity data resources in existence. For example, in 2006, participants reported more than 4.3 million bird observations across North America.

Essays About Birds and Related Issues:

Even Scavengers Get The Blues

I’ll post “Birdwatching (1)” when I find it again…

Birdwatching (2)

Birdwatching (3)

Black-necked Stilt (DigitalZen)

Young Loggerhead Shrike

This little guy was so cute you’d be tempted to pick it up and try to cuddle it (and it was so fearless, it might have let me do it), but check out the beak, designed for eviscerating beetles, grasshoppers and voles.  Not a good idea, cuddling.

Green Heron (Butorides virescens)

Formerly known as the Little Green Heron and Green Back Heron, the Green Heron is a common inhabitant at the edges of slow-moving water, lakes, ponds and marshes. An ambush hunter, it can often be spotted on a low-hanging branch or in grasses at the edge of the water, where it may remain motionless for long periods. I once saw one patiently waiting for two hours at the edge of a lily pond that contained newly-planted lotuses and nothing else.

American Bittern

The American Bittern is a medium-sized heron, noted for its secretiveness and camouflage.  This one got careless and let me get to within about eight feet while it was standing in a clump of spike rush that provided it no cover at all.  I got one shot. You can clearly see that it’s related to the Greenback.

Anhinga

Also known as Water Turkey, Snakebird and Darter, the Anhinga makes its living by swimming slowly underwater and spearing fish with its needle-like beak (hence, “Darter”).  The Anhingidae (one genus and species, worldwide) date back about 20 million years.  They have slower metabolisms than modern birds, and must leave the water and warm up periodically to avoid hypothermia.  A network of blood vessels between their wings absorbs the sun’s heat, even on cloudy days.  Since they obviously can’t tolerate cold water, they are found only in tropical and subtropical climates.

Anhinga (2)

The same bird from a different angle.  If that’s not a prehistoric look, I don’t know what is!

Pickerel Weed

Pickerel Weed is one of the major plants in the marsh, providing food and shelter for literally hundreds of species, from Moorhens to crawdads.  Not only are they beautiful, they give the marsh a wonderful spicy aroma.

Great Blue Herons

The bird in the foreground was in the midst of a mating display when the ladies decided to leave.  He looks rather indignant at their disinterest.  The two birds at the top are fully-fledged juveniles who are still sponging off their parents.

Great Egret (formerly American Egret)

Next to the Great Blue Heron and its white morph, the Great White Heron, the Great Egret is the largest of the North American Herons.  The little guy below is the smallest.

Least Bittern