Two Birds with One Shot

I'm home from an adventure-filled week of birding in southern Oregon and northern California. I now have to edit a lot of photos, which is fun, but time-consuming. Some birds I saw for the first time in my life, but never got a single photo. On the other hand, I have some photos which I'll be scrutinizing for some time, trying to figure out if that is a Juniper Titmouse or Oak Titmouse ... in the past they were just called the Plain Titmouse and their range overlaps in one tiny place ... the place I visited.

Can you imagine my surprise when I looked through the photos and found this one! I admit I was trying to photograph the Great Egret in flight, which was no easy feat to begin with. Then some darned Red-winged Blackbird horned into the photo shoot.

Herons and Egrets

There were many Herons and Egrets in the Everglades. They thrive on the fish in this broad, shallow river flowing across the flat landscape. I began to notice the details that can't be seen well when birds are a great distance, such as eye color and the small feathers on the head of the Great Blue Heron.

The Egrets can be hard to tell apart. Some look similar, and there are white versions of the Little Blue Heron and Great Blue Heron. This next photo is of a Snowy Egret. Though the golden yellow feet are the way most people identify them, the feet can often be under water. I decided to use the yellow on the face as my clue. The Snowy Egret catch fish in many interesting ways. In an earlier post I mentioned how they follow other birds, to catch fish that are fleeing. I also saw this bird stir and probe in the water with its foot to seek out fish. But the most interesting I saw was a tactic of hovering and moving slowly across the surface of the water, just trailing a toe along the water, fishing much like a flyfishing angler carefully places a dry fly on the surface in just the right spot to cause a fish to rise to take the bait.

The Cattle Egret is much like the Snowy, but it feeds on land, often wandering in agricultural fields. Here it has caught a grasshopper to eat.

The Black-crowned Night-Heron can be found in Idaho, but they are so wary in my home state that I have never taken a good photo. They were abundant on the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades, and perhaps the constant flow of people on the boardwalk had made them grow accustomed to the activity.

The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron was a bird I had never seen before, so I was thrilled to hear somebody say its name as I walked the Anhinga Trail. I met many birders and shared what I had seen, and learned what they had seen. Even a simple, "I saw a Yellow-breasted Chat in this area yesterday morning." would make me look and listen the next morning ... and sure enough, there it was. So, I first saw the Yell0w-crowned Night-Heron because someone else found it and pointed it out. Later I found this one on another trail, the Shark River Slough, on the north side of the park.

Mrazek Pond

I'll begin by quoting from the National Park literature. "Mrazek Pond: Most of the year only a few ducks and wading birds, but for a few days during some winters, large numbers of wading birds, including Roseate Spoonbills and Wood Storks, move in to feast."

I was lucky enough to be there on one such glorious morning just before sunrise sharing the excitement with a Northern Shoveler.

I stood behind some reeds and watched this "standing room only" buffet in progress.


It soon became frenzied, with landing and departure on the same runway. The Wood Storks threw open their wings and raced about scooping up breakfast.


The Roseate Spoonbills are a beautiful bird, and to judge by the conversations I often overheard at the water's edge, confused with the other pink bird, the Flamingo. I did not see a Flamingo. Hungry people in Cuba eat them, and the hurricane really gave the Flamingos a jolt to their population as well. Some Flamingos may occasionally escape captivity, and later be seen in the wild, but mostly they just get lost when flying around Cuba and wind up in Florida. So, these pink birds are Roseate Spoonbills (and at a different pond as well, called Eco Pond, about a 5 minute walk from my campsite).

Notice the wide, spoon-shaped bill that gives this bird its name. It looks like it has a throat full of food as well. There were young Spoonbills still more interested in begging parents for food than making an effort to get their own from the water.

In flight they are a sight to behold, very breathtaking, especially on February 14th, Valentine's Day!


Here is a Spoonbill at Mrazek Pond, after the chaos subsided.