A High Use for Fritos

So engrossed was I in learning about osprey molt that I lost track of my kids. Bill Webb tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out the dike road. 

"Look at Baby Zick."

Well, will you lookit that. Liam had taken it upon himself to raid our precious Frito stash for a bunch of panhandling boat-tailed grackles. I broke into a huge grin. 

What's not to love about boat-tailed grackles? Big and shiny beautiful they are, with melodious, metallic clanking calls that instantly evoke south Texas for me. They're bold innovators, smart as little crows.

Finding the Fritos a bit dry, they were taking them down to the water to soak them awhile before trying to break them up and swallow them.

This was not lost on Liam, who found their Frito processing quite charming. They reciprocated by performing some terrific dominance displays to each other.

I have the Frito and you don't. I am the Frito Bandito.

I take your Frito and raise you a Cheeto, you knave.

Liam kept the corn chips coming. He hoped they would eventually take them from his hand, if he was patient enough.

Hello, young lady. Liam was kind enough to give me a Frito. I noticed a familial resemblance between you two, so I'm just stopping by to see if you have anything edible up there on the bench.

Baby Zick indeed. He's showing excellent wild bird etiquette here, keeping his scary flapping extremities tucked, staying still and small, and facing away from the birds. None of this I've had to teach him; he just gets it. So does his sister. 

Given time, I'm sure they'd feed from his sweet hand.

Webb just emailed me, asking if I find ever spider webs that say "SOME KIDS!" 

 Alla time.

Take a Kid Along

Lots of birdies were preening this gorgeous sunny morning at Viera Wetlands. We started out with coats and quickly molted as the mercury rose to 70. A moorhen arranged its feathers, unperturbed by its own tomato-red schnozz. This is one of my nicer Leica-digiscoped images. Thank you, Leica!

Phoebe got downright bossy about digiscoping with Daddy's Leica scope and camera; she'd done some digiscoping with him on their trip to the Space Coast festival in January 2010.

"You're too close. Move back. Wait, you'll scare them. Stop here."  That kind of thing. 

It was the transformation I saw in Phoebe after that trip with Bill that made me decide to take both of the kids this year. When she came back after only a week, it was as if she had grown an inch in stature and a foot in self-confidence. Much as I wanted to give Liam his own experience in Florida, taking them both was the right, the only thing to do. It worked out beautifully. They moved as a single unit, never lonely, seldom bickering, supporting each other and me.

I was proud to introduce them to my friends. If you take your kids lots of places, they learn how to travel. If you integrate them into your social groups, they learn how to mesh with others. Start 'em young and they'll get the hang of being present without being a pain.

 The world needs more Shoom, anyhow.

And every Shoom needs to see an eight-foot reptile hauled out and sleeping by the road. Gators and manatees were the draw for him, and Florida delivered!

Bird Beauties of Viera

If you can't get a good photo of a great blue heron in Florida, there is something wrong with you. But you can get wonderful photos of all kinds of much scarcer and shyer birds at Viera Wetlands, and the photographers all know it.

A glossy ibis preens its coppery plumage.

You beautiful thing. For this birdwatcher, for decades, glossy ibis have been just dark shapes through a spotting scope, and now here you stand right before me, preening unconcernedly.

A drake hooded merganser hides in the rushes, yellow eye like a panic button.

He gathers his mate and out they glide, and I am too close to get them both in (I'm digiscoping with Bill of the Bird's Leica rig, and loving every second of it). For more on the equipment I rather inexpertly used for my closeups, go to Jeff Bouton's Leica Birding Blog.

White ibis are confiding and nice, and pretty much everywhere around Space Coast.

 But the limpkin is a specialty of Viera Wetlands, and this is where wonderful photographers like my friend Marie Read come to immortalize them. Just look at her gallery of a spectacular limpkin fight at Viera!

They were in a much more pacific state of mind when we visited, but the air still rang with their staccato calls. Limpkins, more closely related to cranes than to their lookalike ibis, specialize in eating apple snails, and the empty shells strewn on the shore attested to their efficiency. I love their Latin name: Aramus guaruna. The origin of Aramus is unknown, according to Ernest Choate's Dictionary of American Bird Names, but the Guaruna are a tribe inhabiting the Orinoco region of Venezuela. There are not many bird names in Choate's gem of a book whose origins are unknown, and I like the air of tropical and systematic mystery surrounding this strange and noisy bird. According to Whatbird.com, it's called "Limpkin" for its jerky, awkward flight, but the Internet is full of tautologies. Jury's out on that. I can attest that the limpkin's haunting, hollow, cackling call has much of the resonance of the sandhill crane's purr, and that's good enough for me. Here's "Inspirational Sheila's" brief video of a limpkin calling. I have to confess I hadn't really thought about the limpkin's crane affiliations, but the voice truly gives it away. Listen to this bird's putts and then the full-out cry.

It was good to see and hear this dusky little brother of the crane.

News flash! A palm warbler actually on a palm!!  a sabal, to be exact. I like this photo a lot. You can even see its shadow.

                                                                                   

A shoveler nearly in full breeding plumage. Most of them were looking tatty.  

A lady of the lake (tricolored heron) fishes the clear waters. Hard to believe they were in a shower or toilet at one point...

Sun has its myriad attractions, but the colors of tricolored herons really show nicely in overcast, as on this rainy first visit to Viera.

The once endangered wood stork, another success story for conservation. I really though I'd never be lucky enough to see one, so critically endangered were they when I was growing up. It seems Ol' Ironhead is everywhere now. How lovely to have a true stork in North America. Nyah nyah, Old World. We got one too

and ours has pink feet!

Spectacular birdie he is. I almost drove off the road on my first visit to Fort Meyers in the early 90's, when I saw a bunch of wood storks in a roadside ditch. While I was growing up, wood storks were quietly making a comeback in Florida, spreading through the Southeast. I hadn't known. And now they are a reasonably common sight.

So many things to celebrate! It is what it is, and much of it is good.