A February Visit to Florida: Day 3

On my last day with Mark Smith, he had us meet at Orlando Wetlands Park, a water management area east of Orlando. One of the highlights of the visit were a family of two adult and two baby Sandhill Cranes. Above is one of the very cute babies.

When we arrived, the Sandhill Crane family was foraging by the path into the wetland area. As you can see, the adults have striking red eyes and red patch between them. While Sandhill Cranes do appear in Massachusetts and have been spotted only a couple miles from my house, I have never seen them before.

Here is another photo of one of the parents with one of the chicks.

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I had better photographs of some of birds I saw on Day 2. This photo is of a Mottled Duck. I like this photo because it gives a sense of the duck within the landscape of the park. This style of bird photograph is sometimes referred to as “small in the frame”. The idea is to intentionally place the bird in the wider environment, emphasizing the big picture instead of the details of the bird.

Besides birds, there were also plenty of alligators. Often, it can be challenging to get an interesting photo of the alligators. I really liked this one because of the moss and the perfectly calm water reflecting the cloudy sky. I sent this photo to my daughters with the quote, “Just a moss covered log. Nothing to see here…” My elder daughter immediately responded with “Silas? Is that you?” This was a reference to a children’s book Kate and I used to read to the girls when they were young called “The Great Escape: Or, the Sewer Story” by Peter Lippman. It is the story of an alligator named Silas. He was brought to NYC from the swamps of Florida but then was discarded into the NYC sewer system. The story is about how Silas disguises himself and makes his way back to his home in Florida.

Here is alligator photo that I took from a boardwalk looking down. The yellow around the eyes is really striking up close. Without a boardwalk, I never could have gotten this close with this perspective.

Getting back to the wonderful birds, here is a female Anhinga in breeding plumage. Compared to the male in breeding plumage I included in my last post, the female has the brown neck.

The reason there are so many birds at the Orlando Wetlands Park is the combination of shelter, water, and food for a wide range of species. On the food side, here is an unfortunate frog that was caught by a Little Blue Heron.

Perhaps 30 minutes later, I saw this Great Blue Heron who had also caught a frog. The frog might think it is about to get away, but the Great Blue Heron has only dropped the frog in order to spear it with its beak.

Not far away from the Great Blue Heron, a Purple Gallinule searched food. The Purple Gallinules are omnivores, but typically eat more plants than animals.

The male Boat-tailed Grackle has an iridescent plumage which can vary in color significantly depending on the light and angle. In this photo, the bird’s color is a vibrant blue, but it can easily appear green or black.

While this was my last day of photography with Mark, the Orlando Wetland Park was essentially on route from my hotel to the Orlando Airport. Since my flight did not leave until the next afternoon, I decided to return here around sunrise the next morning for a bit more photography before flying home. This means that there will be one more post from my Florida trip.