A day at Orlando Wetlands, Florida

Orlando Wetlands is a great site in Orange County, Florida for seeing a diverse array of birds.

How can a day be bad when you start with such a great look at an Anhinga, knowing that it will only get better.

Vultures might not be a favorite of everybody, but I really like them. Here’s a portrait of a Black Vulture.

It’s interesting how Glossy Ibises were the dominate ibis today, greatly outnumbering white Ibises, who are called “long-billed lawn chickens” by a friend.

The most common warblers here today were Palm Warblers.

I am quite fond of Green Herons and was please to find several allowing us nice views.

As I said earlier, it only gets better as we hiked the dikes. We found at least six Purple Gallinules. It was surprising to watch Common Gallinules often chasing feeding Purple Gallinules away.

Here’s a Common Gallinules for comparison.

And it still was getting better. Finding two Limpkin feeding together was nice. Susan even watched one snag a large snail.

This was the highlight of the day – two Great Horned Owl kids in a nest. Well, I was wearing my Northern Hawk Owl shirt. Even a pain of Barred Owls calling as we were nearly done paled in comparison.

Tricolored Herons were easily found all day.

This was the only Black-Crowned Night-Heron that we found. It was snacking on a young snapping turtle.

The dominant waterbird today was Common Gallinule, so when we finally found these Mottled Ducks we were happy.

Our last bird of the hike was another Limpkin.

More tomorrow…