Sunday, May 3, 2009

This time of year

I love this time of year ~ especially here in this part of Florida. The weather is warming up but we still have an amazing breeze. School is getting ready to wind down which means sleeping past 6:00 am in the morning. And while we don't see signs of new life in our plants (they are green all year) we definitely see it in the wildlife around here. We've been watching this huge swans nest for a while DSC06079C I wish I had gotten a picture with the swans on it ~ but I thought I had more time plus there was always a couple of cars parked off the street taking pics so I didn't stop. So I drove by the area and see there are now dozens of cars parked off the street and I just had to stop to see what was going on... The eggs hatched! I counted 7 little swans. Here they are taking a swim with daddy.
DSC06082C
After they got out they went directly to mommy while daddy sunned himself. We all kept a good distance away from them and they seemed to enjoy all the paparazzi! I had Julianne with me and she was thrilled to be able to see them.
We've had quite a few other babies around here lately. It's that time of year when the sandhill cranes have their babies... usually one or maybe two. Here's a few that inhabit our area DSC06090 There are actually 4 in this family, two adults and two children. I managed to get a new picture of them about 2 weeks after this. DSC06200 This one was taken a couple of houses down from ours. See how big they are getting? Soon they will be the same size as the parents and the only way you can tell them apart is the by the red on their forehead. The babies will not get that coloring for quite some time. While normally these birds are migratory, we have them in Florida year round. They live about 20 yrs in the wild and stay with the same mate the entire time. Can you tell I'm really fascinated by them?

While these aren't "baby" pictures, I thought they were cool nontheless. It's a Roseate spoonbill. It's rare to see them here so I was thrilled to get these pics.
DSC06077C
And here he is just taking off...
DSC06078 I can't tell you how happy it makes me to be able to see these things on a regular basis right here in our little area.


3 comments:

Julie H said...

I haven't seen any baby geese or ducks here yet. I almost always try to get a picture but can hardly ever get close enough!

Miss Healthypants said...

I'm jealous over here...such wonderful wildlife you have there! *smiles*

mom23boys said...

OOOH, Three months and counting!