A Few More of My Favorite Waders

Here are the next to last photos saved from the Ding Darling trip. I hope everyone enjoyed the photos, and will put Ding Darling on their list to visit. You won't regret the up close and personal encounters almost guaranteed every morning!

White Ibis



Tri-colored Heron preening



Roseate Spoonbill flipping food back to swallow.



Reddish Egret portrait



Reddish Egret preening.



Tomorrow: A storm rolls in...

Little Blue Heron Continued...

Here are some more photos of the very cooperative Little Blue Heron.

This photo happened as I shot from the back of the car. After this shot, I had to change to a smaller lens to catch the action.

Day 2- Ding Darling Explodes with Wildlife!

Being much better prepared for our second day, we headed for Ding Darling in the morning with greater expectations than last nights visit. A few wrong turns later, we finally arrive at around 9 a.m, not exactly early morning, but anyway...


Our first photo op was a very cooperative Little Blue Heron. The bonus was that he was in the midst of catching a crab. Again, this guy was right next to the road, so anybody with any kind of lens could get a great close up. We left him to his feast as the excitement built for what could possibly be around the corner...




(Click on photo to see the crab!)







It just so happened that another little blue heron in it's white morph phase was fishing. I thought it was so cool to see the different stages of the little blue. You would not get confused with ID, as I thought I might, when you take a look at the blueish bill. Unmistakable!








And here again, as we went down the road, discovered yet another Little Blue Heron in the inbetween stage of white morph and blue. So freakin cool!








Now this shot is my first look at the Roseate Spoonbill. He was quite a distance off, but not knowing if I would ever see one, I had to get some shots and wish for the best. They came out better than expected, and of course I didn't know I would get much closer shots later that week. This particular guy is what brought me to Florida in the first place. This unusual creature has always intrigued me, along with the various other herons I had yet to see. Add a Burrowing Owl, and the destination was a must see!








Here is another fascinating creature I had never seen with my own eyes before. The White Ibis was alot smaller than I had thought. That blue eye was just as blue as I've seen in pictures, but seeing it "for realsies" was awesome!



(Click on photo to see the blue eye!)







Another amazingly cool wader was this Reddish Egret. Isn't he handsome? That plumage was gorgeous! I still can't believe that all these species were concentrated here in this place!







And last but certainly not least, we stumble upon this Tricolored Heron. He flew to this log after we walked over a bridge. He must have been on the waters edge too close to us and flew just a few feet away for safety. He was completely at ease standing on the log. We took his picture for at least 5 minutes, and he could care less. Yet another handsome guy to mark off my list!



And that concludes the trip through Ding Darling. I will continue Tuesdays sightings tomorrow with a new post, as the day got even better!

I will also share so many more photos that I got from Ding Darling, but I didn't want to overwhelm the post with too many photos to look at, so I will save them for additional postings after I get through posting about each day. I loved this area!

First Sightings in Florida

Our trip was AMAZING! We saw so many wonderful things, and I have so much to blog about, so I thought I would start with each day in order and what we saw on that day:

Upon arrival into Fort Myers at sometime around 2 in the afternoon on Monday, we headed for the hotel in Bonita Springs to drop off luggage and start exploring. Our first stop was Ding Darling because the anticipation of finding every wader you can think of here was overwhelming. Near the entrance, we spotted an Osprey on a tall snag. Now, that's a pretty good start to our short afternoon jaunt!










We then pay our entrance fee and follow the road at a crawl, not wanting to miss a single thing. We see that we are surrounded in mangroves and are at the edge of our seats waiting for the next sighting. A few miles later, we start to think that we came at the wrong time. We were not seeing anything, which was shocking, because everything I have read and saw in pictures proved that this place was going to be a wonderland. We kept going and finally saw this juvy Yellow-crowned Night Heron just a few feet from the car. (Things were looking better we thought...)









We rounded a curve, pulled over to look at our first Tri-colored Heron fly over and noticed a Raccoon cross the road...










After that stop, we see a small bird roosting on a wire and took a closer look. It was our first Loggerhead Shrike but not our last. (We saw many on wires in the coming days.)









Next, we spot a Pileated Woodpecker up high and stopped for some shots. They make them much larger in Florida, than in Illinois. It was a really cool sight, since our heron sightings were almost zero for the day.








We left Ding Darling as our road came to an end, and headed toward Cape Coral since the day had a few more hours of sunlight and our thirst for nature wasn't quenched. The city is known for its Burrowing Owl population and I had a map of burrow locations. I was VERY excited! Adding to my Life Owl List was one of the attractions for choosing this area to vacation.
We get to Cape Coral, pay $2 to cross a bridge, and begin our journey in search of the tiny owls. We look for wooden "T" pickets (The pickets serve 2 purposes. It provides a roost for the owls, and marks the burrow so that people don't step on them.) in yards and start to see a few. The day is almost at a close and the clouds start to take over the sky, but we didn't care so much, as we just wanted to spot a few and save the cameras for a better sky on another day. We spot our first occupants:



They were so small! What we didn't see until further inspection was another one was on the ground. So there are 3 of them in this photo! We spotted a few more along some neighborhood streets, but this was our only one with multiple owls. We marked our locations on the map and planned for another day. We couldn't wait to get back!

Even though our first day was a bust photographically, we just hoped for good weather so that we could do it all over again tomorrow! And the tomorrow we hoped for arrived and what a day it was! Tune in tomorrow for the "real" start to our vacation!

NOTE: Getting to any place in SW Florida it seems, could cost you a small fortune. The state nickels and dimes you for everything. Crossing a bridge, for instance can cost you $2 to $6 as I have found. Parking at a public beach usually cost $2 an hour, or $8 for the day. I spent alot of time at various places and crossed many bridges. I also went to several beaches, parked, payed, and left a few minutes later, either because I didn't like the beach or got rained out, BUT... I did enjoy every minute there and would go back if the opportunity arose in a heartbeat! (Although my wallet protests!)

Ding Darling Anyone?

I am headed to Florida this coming Monday for a week, and am very excited to be visiting a vacation bucket-list destination at long last. Ding Darling is renowned for its birding and especially its waders/shorebirds which was the huge draw for me.

Now I ask...Has anyone been there and would you have any tips for me? I am also visiting Cape Coral for their Burrowing Owls, and will try to visit as many of their area parks as possible, but other than Ding Darling, I'm not sure what other locales might be a really good hotspot. So I ask my blogger buddies, what do you know about Ding Darling/Sanibel/Captiva Island or Fort Myers?