Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Sparky loves riding over to Jiggs Landing in Bradenton, just about a half mile from her house to see what birds are there…This past two months, it was a great horned owl family that flew the coop recently (an osprey nest they overtook from the ospreys who built it) and the ospreys came and claimed it back….It looks like the ospreys might be incubating some eggs up in the tall pine tree. Sparky captured one of the parent ospreys feeding on a fish it recently caught. The tail was still flopping around when Sparky started taking photos.  Ew-w-w-w-w! But that's nature. Sparky had another photo where the osprey had taken an internal part of the fish and had it in its mouth. Double EW-W-W-W-W! So she decided it was too gross to publish.

At Jiggs Landing, there is a boardwalk, and out at the end of the boardwalk is a nice little viewing platform. There were some pretty little marsh plants blooming today…

Sparky sat down to watch some least terns, the smallest members of the tern family, who were congregating on the boardwalk.

They sat in a row on the boardwalk fence…..

They took turns getting ready to fly one by one in search of a meal. And pooping….

When they got something, back they came, chattering with the fish in their mouths, like "Look guys, I'm telling you, there's food out there, you just gotta look for it!"

And off one would fly again to catch another skinny little fish…..

"I'm not impressed," says the buddy.

It's a beautiful little park with a kayak launch. Sparky went out kayaking once so far on the Braden River from Jiggs Landing, but it's time to get back out again, she thinks!

Sparky has been watching all over town for baby sandhill cranes. They've been very elusive…They seem to be born about March, so they've already hatched and are growing. FINALLY--a pair spotted while we were out garage sale shopping….and with only an iPhone to capture the moment….sigh…Gotta start carrying the little Canon Powershot everywhere!

Bye-bye little birds…..

1000 and Running....

Sarasota, FL      High:  77      Low:  63

Four days ago Sparky hit a record--she has written ONE THOUSAND posts! Every single day we've been on the road since we started June 18th, 2012. Can't believe it! Thought I'd run out of things to say and be dwindling down to a couple of days a week, if that. Thought for sure when we spent four months in one place, I'd run out of things to say...but I haven't yet.. Still gonna try to keep going with the blog until we come off the road, whenever that might be. There are quiet days and not so quiet days, but it's important to keep the memories alive of every day we have together, so I will keep on writing....Even if some days are a little boring now and then. Even if writing a blog when you don't really have much to say but want to keep things interesting is a little hard now and then...

What's coming up?  A visit to Mote Aquarium, the circus, a folk and acoustic music festival at Oscar Scherer State Park, a blues fest in downtown Sarasota, and lots lots more. Today, we were going to try and get to Mote Aquarium, but because it was raining and the weather quite cool, everybody and their brothers were out driving around, looking like they were headed to the Mote.  The traffic was so backlogged so far back into Armand Circle, that we gave up going to the Mote today. Instead, we kept driving towards Anna Maria Island and Coquina Beach. Coquina Beach is a fabulous beach with squishy soft white sand and just a beautiful view of the Gulf of Mexico. This happens to be a sand barrier to protect against erosion.

The park around at the beach is long and has a really wide sidewalk/walking path that seems to run for miles along the beach.

Despite the gray day and off and on rain showers, we saw families out having fun despite the bad weather....

You can park a big RV in the spacious parking lots for the day, but you can't spend the night.

Sparky loves seeing what's at the beach in all kinds of weather, but not being a sunbather, she'd rather go when it's cloudy. There were TONS of birds at the beach, waiting to see what the weather was going to do.

"I'm tellin' ya, I think it's gonna rain."

There were a couple of different kinds of terns today. Sparky knows that some of these are a lesser tern, and some of them are a least tern,  and the black ones with the orange beaks she has no clue, but it was still cool to see so many of them resting on the beach.

"I know it's here somewhere!" says the one bird with the beak down.

Sparky loves the crested feathers that make these birds look like they are having a bad hair day! She thinks the one bird on the right might have a broken wing? Royal terns?

"Honey, can't you do something about your hair? You look like Alfalfa!"

Eldy actually said that to Sparky one morning...  :-) It's the spiky hairdo look, dear. It's supposed to look that way!

And then there is this type of shorebird....The two of them were standing off to one side away from the crowd and looked like they were trying to decide whether to join the group or not...

"I don't know about you, but I'M LEAVING!"

What else did we see? A beautiful Great Blue heron cleaning his feathers....

Such a beautiful, graceful bird....Although they are so very common here in Florida and elsewhere, they are still beautiful to see....

To some, a gray rainy day is ugly, to us, it's beautiful...Florida really needs the rain..They are about 6" below normal for this time of year. We were glad to see and hear the rain come today.....

And the piece de resistance at the end of the day?  DESSERT! How about this salty caramel vanilla cake with buttercream icing, caramel mousse and little crunchies that made it taste a little like caramel butter brickle? (Longhorn Steakhouse, for a limited time only) Which is probably a good thing! Yum!

Bye for now.......