Where's Eldo?: A Little Gem Courtesy of Audubon

Sunday, April 19, 2015

A Little Gem Courtesy of Audubon

Sparky and Eldo have never been to the Venice Rookery...a little site maintained by the Audubon Society...Not sure why, partly because we hadn't heard of it until this year. Sparky started seeing photos from photographer acquaintances and they were shooting some amazing photos at this little park in Venice.

So we decided to go late afternoon one Sunday and here's what we found...a very small park with a small island in the middle. Alligators frequent the lake to keep predators away from the birds, or so the site says. Sparky would think the gators would get an occasional avian meal? Also there is limited parking in a very small lot, but luckily, not very many people here today...We arrived about 5:30 PM...As we spent some time at the park, the serious photographers starting showing up later with HUMONGOUS lenses...like 600 mm.....WOW! Sunset was almost 8:00 PM so perhaps we were there a little on the early side, as Sparky had to shoot into the sun a little bit. These photos are taken with a small Canon SX500 IS. The zoom is only 30X on this camera and the detail is not as crisp as she hoped it would be....But Sparky was still happy with most of her photos.

People there said the nesting starts in February.....Almost every bird species we saw there were sitting on nests today, and many of the babies had hatched and were already growing and getting ready to fledge in a few days or a few weeks. It was so cool to see a heron with its nest, which was pretty big! So used to only seeing them standing in the water fishing...

There were several herons on nests...

Here, the great blue heron chicks or young birds were clamoring for food. They look big enough to feed themselves! And don't they look like Groucho Marx a bit?

Here's another shot of the hungry herons...Those head feathers just crack us up!

Snowy egrets and their chicks were in abundance.....They look like fluffs of cotton balls. :-)

The snowy egrets were showing off BIG time!

Not sure what those birds are to the left of this beautiful egret, but they might be cormorant chicks? They almost look like baby swans. This is Sparky's favorite photo of the night.....