Biking to the Celery Fields

Sarasota, FL       High:  86      Low:  65

Sparky hopped on her bike today and rode over to the Celery Fields just around the corner from Sun 'n' Fun. It's about five miles there and back...The celery fields were cultivated for---- wait for it----celery!  :-)  ---back in the 1920's all the way through the 1990's......It's now a collection of wetlands, marshes, ponds and shallow pools and is a water management district for the city of Sarasota. The Audubon Society has recognized it's a valuable resource and habitat for over 216 species of birds. So this is a great place to bike over to from the park to just sit and watch the birds.....

There's an observation boardwalk and gazebo structure to sit in some shade while you bird watch...Or you can walk the perimeter of some of the marshes.....

Sparky saw lots of birds today, but no roseate spoonbills, her favorite....Just a beautiful Great Blue heron with his beautiful reflection in the water.....

A pair of ducks....Sparky is not sure of what kind even though she consulted this website:
http://www.ducks.org/hunting/waterfowl-id

A big ole turtle sunning himself....

This white ibis....

And this brown bird...Sparky thinks it's a limpkin....

Sparky needs a bird guide to Florida! She knows ibis, most herons and the spoonbills, but not completely sure about these....Thank you in advance for your help if she missed in identifying these, as there are definitely more knowledgable birders out there!

Other than a wonderful bike ride today for Sparky, we spent a quiet day running errands and figuring out when we are going to go to Red Bay...You can tell we aren't in a hurry to get there to sit and wait...It's the busiest time of the year for Tiffin's facility/factory at Red Bay so we're kind of stalling until the crowd thins out. :-) The   service department says towards the end of June is when things start to calm down. We might stay at Sun 'n' Fun for part of June! Sparky wouldn't mind......

Tomorrow, Sparky flies out of Orland to head for Houston for six days! Grandbaby and daughter, here we come! Sparky is not taking her computer, so she will be blogging on her iPhone and using her camera phone mostly for photos for the blog. So if there's a dip in quality and quantity for a few days, that will be the reason. See you in Houston!