Featured Feathered Friend: Baby Edition! - Black-necked Stilts

Nothing says springtime is here more than the sight of baby birds! In the past few years, we have been lucky to see many different types of baby birds in many different stages. In one year, we saw the chicks of  about 14 different species of birds! So to celebrate spring babies, I'm going to do a series of Featured Feathered Friends highlighting some of the precious little chicks we've seen over the years.

Male Black-necked Stilt on a nest of in the grasses

Female Black-necked Stilt sleeping on a nest

Nesting Female Black-necked Stilt

To start it off, I'm presenting the Black-necked Stilt. These elegant, tall, dark and white birds are quite striking when you see them. They somehow support their slightly chunky bodies on the thinnest, tallest pink legs! I'm not quite sure what came first - the name of the bird or the name of the walking poles, but you really can't forget the name of this bird once you've seen one.

Female Black-necked Stilt gives a great look at her 4 eggs

Look at how those legs bend!

Male Black-necked Stilt incubating eggs

We first saw these nesting Black-necked Stilts at Green Cay Wetlands in Palm Beach County, Florida in mid-May, 2010. One fantastic thing about birds at Green Cay is how close they let people get to them. These stilts nested only feet from the boardwalk and allowed great, intimate views of their nest, and yes, their eggs! Here you can see both a male and female incubating - the male having the completely black back and the female having a brown back. These stilts built clumpy nests on tufts of grass or dead vegetation on the mud, laying about 4 light brown, dark-speckled eggs.

How many chicks can you spot?!

More legs than body =)

When we went back about 2 weeks later, there were babies! The Black-necked Stilt chicks are some of the cutest little babies you will ever see. They are mostly tan speckled with black on top and white underneath. Their coloration served perfectly as camouflage in the wetland as they ran across the muddy marsh with dried vegetation all around. And even as little ones, they already have very long legs, which are yellow first, in proportion to their little bodies. You can see they start off with big feet!

Mommy and 2 babies

Two adorable Black-necked Stilt chicks

But beware if you are a bird or any other animal getting too close to the Stilt babies. The parents will swoop and practically attack you in defense of their chicks. Here you can see how one adult was not at all pleased with this Tri-colored heron near his babies. He swooped and swooped for minutes while loudly sounding off an alarm call.

Black-necked Stilt Defending his little ones

Family Photo - Mom and Dad and the 3 kids

What a pleasure it was to witness the nesting of the Black-necked Stilt as well as the chicks. We saw how even these long-legged birds can collapse and bend their legs to gracefully sit on a nest and incubate their precious eggs. And the babies were very independent and running right alongside and behind mommy and daddy foraging in their footsteps. Ahhhh... They're almost too cute for words!

Just me and my shadow

He's got big shoes to fill!

Featured Feathered Friend: Green-winged Teal

Today's FFF is the lovely duck, the Green-winged Teal. We spotted this little beauty in Palm Beach County, FL at Green Cay Wetlands in early February 2010. We don't see these guys too often, but when we do, it's always a treat! I find the male Green-winged Teal to be one of the handsomest ducks. He rocks so many different colors and patterns and gets away with it. He has that beautiful rufous head with that large brush stroke of bright, shiny metallic green on his head. His body looks mostly gray with the fine black and pale barring, and then he has that speckly buffy breast, a white bar near his shoulder, brownish-gray wings, and a pale yellow streak on his tail outlined in black. And of course, he dons that bold green speculum on his wings. 

Male Green-Winged Teal in all his glory

Male Green-winged Teal doing a little preening and showing off all of his colors

Yes, this little dabbler (our smallest dabbling duck), is such a special sight indeed. When we found this beautiful male, we also found him with his lovely lady. Of course, she isn't showy in her colors like her male counterpart, but she still sports that green speculum. 

A female and male Green-winged Teal

A lovely couple of Green-winged Teals just hanging around

This was the best look of Green-winged Teals that we've had to date. Other times we've seen them, they've been farther away or swimming to get far away from us. But this couple didn't seem to mind us ogling them. We even caught an intimate moment between them when the female seemed to be nagging at her mate. Oh, it's all out of love!

"I told you to take out the trash!"

"Hmph!" She says. Now she's giving him the cold shoulder.

A Stroll Through Green Cay

On our most recent outing to Green Cay, we had lots of of great looks, but no real surprises. We did a bit of warbler-watching, and found Black-and-white, Palm, Myrtle, Yellow-throated, and Common Yellowthroat. We also found a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovering by some cabbage palms, and a single Painted Bunting. But mostly it was a heron and duck day, which was alright with us.

Lots of ducks on the water. Among the Blue-winged Teal and Mottled Ducks was a lone Mallard hybrid. This was the first Mallard that I can remember seeing at Green Cay, which gave us cause for consternation, given it's proclivity for hybridizing with other species, particularly the threatened Mottled Duck. Hopefully he keeps to himself, but he seemed like a shady character to me. It looks like he already had a Blue-winged Teal playing coy with him.

We had one Northern Harrier sighting, which flew low over the marsh for a couple of minutes before disappearing behind a row of cypress trees.

Despite it's best efforts, we found this American Alligator lurking in some camouflage. He looked he might rise out of the water à la Apocalypse Now, but instead stayed put and waited for his avian Kurtz to come to him.

We found a Sora in exactly the same place that we found it previously, leading me to suspect that it's the same individual. Once again, s/he stayed close to the edge of the reeds for a minute, before running back inside.

The herons were especially photogenic. Maureen got lots of great shots as they posed for us both on and just off of the boardwalk. 

Featured Feather Friend - New Weekly Item!

We would like to introduce a new weekly feature here on our blog. As you may have noticed, I love taking bird photos. For me (Maureen), it really enhances my birding experience. To capture that perfect shot, especially of a life bird, gives me such an extreme feeling of accomplishment. So here we present to you “Featured Feathered Friend” where I can display one of my best bird photos and share a little story behind the shot. Since this is an intro post, I'll give a little background about myself and include 3 lovely pictures from the same event. But after this one, I'll keep them short and sweet ;-)

Really, our birding experience really started with me taking photos of birds to figure out what they were. Nick and I started out with a general Audubon Field Guide, a camera, and curiosity, and our love of birding took off from there. I had a long lens I wanted to learn to use, and we had birds all around us that we wanted to figure out and identify. We started with taking pictures of the “easy” birds – the ones that would stay still as long as you didn’t approach too closely, such as the array of herons and egrets here in South Florida. Then, the challenge would take on a new dimension as we started chasing down those little tweeting things high up in the trees, which we soon found out to be warblers.

Now everywhere we go birding, I have my camera around my neck looking to find a new lifer and to take that perfect shot. While no shot is perfect, I suppose that’s the thrill of the game – trying to get the best shot possible. And even with run-ins with birds we’ve seen before, I’m always trying to get a better shot than the last. And then there are also the times when I just see such a beautiful opportunity that I can’t pass it up - the bird is in perfect light, a raptor flies by me at just the right speed for me to snap a shot, a passerine is so close and so still that it feels like he’s posing... 

But enough about me... Here is our first featured feathered friend. Here we have a young Roseate Spoonbill. So, in the first picture, I had the great fortune of having this pretty in pink bird take off right in front of me and towards me! Nick and I had been taking one of our many walks along the boardwalk of Green Cay Nature Center. We came around a bend and found a photographer standing there with tripod set up and camera positioned on this spoonbill standing on a snag. The man had told us that he’d been there about an hour waiting for this bird to take flight. I wasn’t sure if this was true, but I wouldn’t doubt it. So I decided to take my chances too and set up my tripod a few feet down the boardwalk and wait to see if I could get a nice take off/flight shot. Well, I got lucky and didn’t have to wait very long. After about 10 minutes or so, the spoonbill was turned towards me and took flight! I got off a couple of shots, and this was one of the prize ones. The light was coming through it’s wings so fantastically! The second picture is a continuation of the spoonbill's flight.

The spoonbill then landed in the shallow swampy water below and started feeding with other spoonbills that we hadn’t even realized were there. The spoonbills were now low and wading amongst the bald cypress trees. Like a true sport, I got down on my knees, and at some points, my elbows, and started snapping away, pointing my camera between the planks of the boardwalk. I believe I was even laying down at one point... All for that perfect shot, which leads me to my next picture. This juvenile Roseate Spoonbill (which you can tell is young by his fuzzy-ish white head rather than the bald head of the adult) paused in his frantic feeding long enough for me to snap away as he posed in the water, his creamy pink feathers contrasting with the lime green duckweed. And here, my friends, is our first featured feathered friend.

A Morning at Green Cay

It seems like we've been traveling so much lately that we've hardly had time to do any birding locally. A few weeks ago we decided to change that and spent a long morning on the boardwalk at Green Cay. Now, I love Green Cay, and it's certainly the most reliable location for wading birds within a half hour's drive, but we always have to face the fact that lots of non-birders also visit, and their interests are often at odds with ours.

Little Blue Heron

Occasionally, birds fly up and perch on the railing, giving everyone with a camera a golden opportunity for photos. But the boardwalk is dominated by speed walking senior citizens throughout the morning, and they stop for nothing. On this particular morning, a Wood Stork landed just a few feet away from us. As a group of walkers approached from around a bend, Maureen snapped away, mindful that it was only a matter of seconds before they came near enough to flush it. 

A little farther along, a Roseate Spoonbill prompted one of the most surreal conversations I've ever had.

Woman: Oh, look - a Flamingo!

Me: It's a Spoonbill.

Women (to me): Oh, it's a Spoonbill, not a Flamingo. I don't know why I believed you!

That's right - she attributed the words that came out of her mouth to me, and actually seemed annoyed. I didn't know what to say to that (and still don't), so I just gave her a nonplused look for several seconds and walked away, scratching my head.

Roseate Spoonbill -- NOT a Flamingo

It seems that most of the passing migrants have already made their way through, and more and more we're only seeing those warblers that we can reliably expect to see throughout the winter in South Florida. Among these was this Common Yellowthroat, but the Palms and Yellow-rumped (or is it Myrtle) Warblers were also out in big numbers.

Plenty of ducks were on the water, with a little more variety than just the Mottled Ducks, now that the Blue-winged Teal are back. We couldn't find any Green-winged Teal, although we'd seen them reported, but then, we've never never seen more than a few at a time at Green Cay, even when we have come across them.

As we approached the end of the boardwalk loop, we found a Sora that had ventured out of its hiding place in the reeds. Not long after discovering him, he disappeared back out of sight. It's nice to see the Soras every once and a while to reassure us that they're still around, even if we can't find them most of the time.