An early, cool start with occasional light rain, which had cleared by the time we reached our destination. This was a South Volusia Audubon Society field trip that I was co-leading with Don. There were seven of us in three cars. One of our first birds was an Eastern Phoebe.
We soon started finding a lot of ducks including Northern Pintail.
The male Gadwall on the right is quite subtile in coloration. I wish that I had caught it with it’s head up, but it was actively feeding.
We were lucky to find another Black-crowned Night-Heron today and were a lot closer to it that yesterday.
A target bird here is the Gray-headed (Purple) Swamphen. It is larger than either of the gallinules.
Another bird that we had a good look at was a male Painted Bunting. It was eating the seed-heads of the Spanish Needles (the white flowers in the left photo). For a while it even sang.
Finding some Great Blue Herons on nests in small wetland trees was nice.
The ever present Osprey we either fishing, soaring on at nests.
We also had a number of Northern Harriers gliding over the marshes in search of prey.
After seeing many in flight we were finally able to see both Fulvous and Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks. Thee are two species that we have always found in decent numbers here.
More tomorrow…
Michael's Place 